Ship of Fools: Homesickness support

Thread: Homesickness support Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.

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Posted by Macrina (# 8807) on :

Hello folk,

As someone who is voluntarily and mostly happily a very long way away from home I nonetheless suffer from occasional and severe bouts of homesickness. I hate these and how crippling they can be. I also hate feeling that I can't talk about it as frankly as I'd like for fear of spoiling the 'wonderful new life' story that everyone back home keeps cooing over whenever I talk to them. I've tried with my parents a bit but they too are wonderful new lifers and I feel like I'm letting them down if I admit to struggling too much.

I started this thread in case anyone else needs it as much as I do right now.

Posted by Cara (# 16966) on :

I have suffered from this, Macrina. It is awful. I'm afraid in my experience it gets worse, not better, with time. I'm suffering from it less now because I will soon be back home.

It's great that you've posted here--but you also need someone in Real Life you can talk to about it, who will understand.
Another person who is expat from the same original homeland?

(Assuming you're speaking about being in a different country from "home", and not just a distant part of the same country).

It's not healthy to be suppressing an important part of yourself and your feelings because you're afraid to spoil the "wonderful new life story."

Well, obviously, you realise that, hence posting here!

Posted by comet (# 10353) on :

me, too. it's been miserable. in part because I've not moved some place crazy different and I lived here before long ago and so I should be happy as a damn clam.

but I'm not. and I want to go home, but I can't.

Posted by no prophet (# 15560) on :

My children have intermittently done what you have done. And I was sent away to school when a teen, without contact with parents and family and home for 1-2 years at stretches. it is very hard. the best is to connect with other lonelies. To create plans with other surrogate family members. To develop routine, to be busy. To fall in love. Don't what else to say. You do indeed get used to it.

Posted by piglet (# 11803) on :

I've lived two stretches of water away from home (Orkney) ever since I got married 25 years ago. The first 15 years we were in Northern Ireland, so getting home wasn't that hard, but for the last 10 we've been in Canada, so nipping home for the weekend isn't an option (we've been back at least once a year since we came here).

I have to confess that I've never been the homesick type; I might read about specific things going on at home and think, "I wish I could be there" but I just accept that I can't. We're very lucky to have made lots of great friends here, who have made sure that we feel at home, so getting on the plane to come back isn't the drag that it might be.

I know it probably sounds a bit obvious, but I've made contact on Facebook with people from home who I hadn't heard from in years; and ever since we left my dad has sent us copies of the local paper every few weeks, which keeps us up to date with what's going on.

Posted by Welease Woderwick (# 10424) on :

I have an ambivalent relationship with the UK - I really don't like going back there though I enjoy aspects of it when I do go; but then sometimes I am really nostalgic for it. I think nostalgia for downtown Birkenhead is properly quite a rare medical condition!

And also I know that what I am nostalgic for isn't there anyway - in 15 or 16 years UK has changed far more than my image of it has done. To put that in context I left shortly after the 1997 Labour election victory - that's a lot of changes!

I am still in close contact with a number of folks back in UK and I see various family and friends when they come and visit. Otherwise I avoid the ex-pat community like the plague!

Posted by comet (# 10353) on :

interesting you say that, Wodders.

my Dad left AK in 1977 or '78 (I don't remember, I was barely walking) and in his mind the place has frozen. He gets terribly nostalgic, talks us up to everyone, but the AK he remembers no longer exists. we've had the pipeline boom since then; our population has tripled since he moved here in the 60s, He remembers a Wasilla that had one stop sign and a general store - essentially, it was a stop on the railroad and a place to gas up on the highway. Now, it's a city. I have tried to tell him how much it has changed, but he won't hear me. at the same time, he won't come back to visit so somewhere within him he knows. he just refuses to admit it.

Posted by Hart (# 4991) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Welease Woderwick:

And also I know that what I am nostalgic for isn't there anyway - in 15 or 16 years UK has changed far more than my image of it has done. To put that in context I left shortly after the 1997 Labour election victory - that's a lot of changes!

This totally resonates with me, even though it's been less time. I left just over nine years ago and going back to Britain in many ways feels like going to a new country. I don't quite speak the lingo anymore (even though I understand it fluently), I don't get the pop culture references, the wrong teams are in the Premier League, and I still don't understand oyster cards. I only go back for the people now.

Posted by piglet (# 11803) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Hart:
... the wrong teams are in the Premier League ...

Too right - it's not been the same since Ipswich Town was relegated ... [Big Grin]

Posted by snowgoose (# 4394) on :

I left the Buffalo, New York area 34 years ago and have been back only once every year or so for a few days at a time, but I am getting more and more homesick. People are shocked that someone would actually want to go back to Buffalo (known for its snowy winters), but home is home. I don't mind winter, actually, and I miss the snow, but mostly I miss my sisters and their families.

Posted by Lucia (# 15201) on :

Putting up the Christmas tree today. Yes, I know it seems a bit early but Advent starts tomorrow and when you live in a country that doesn't celebrate Christmas you need to create your own feeling that Christmas is coming!

I don't often feel homesick, have been living outside the UK for more than seven years, but somehow thinking about Christmas makes me feel again the distance from my parents and wider family and from the traditions of Christmas of the rest of my life. I'd love to spend Christmas in the UK with them all again, but simply can't afford to travel more than once a year and we always go in the summer during the long school holiday. I don't know how long we will stay here, maybe another two or three years. My parents are getting older, I just hope that one day I will get to celebrate Christmas with them again and that by the time we are back in the UK it won't be too late...

Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :

Another homesicker here, though I've now been over half my life where we are now.

And yes, the place I'm homesick for no longer exists, and not just because my family got smashed to smithereens this past year. The family home is gone, my folks have basically left us kids behind geographically and otherwise and seem happy about it, and I'm too far away to try to provide some kind of alternative meeting place so at least the sibs can stick together.

And has anybody noticed that you can be homesick for two different places at once? (when I'm here, I miss there, and etc.) Meh.

Posted by PeteC (# 10422) on :

I often get homesick, but I have lived where I am for over 40 years. What I get homesick for - people and places no longer exist. So I make do with what I have, and am happy.

Posted by no prophet (# 15560) on :

There are places I remember and people and things that went before. Some are dead and some are living. In my life I've loved them all.

I have been playing this song (Beatles - In My Life) since, I don't know, 1969 mostly in my head, mostly every 2nd or 3rd day. It is only the relationships with others and helpful meaningless/meaningful little bits that they say that make life possible and bearable.

May the little tidbits from others within our lives make it all bearable. God bless you. (I recommend tea as a helpful companion. And cookies, which are also called biscuits, preferably containing chocolate chips).

Posted by MrsBeaky (# 17663) on :

We've been here in Kenya for a whole year....and
up until now I haven't felt homesick.

Thanksgiving and Christmas are the only regular times when we would all be together as a family and so it was probably inevitable that I would feel it now.

But it's hard!

Posted by Huia (# 3473) on :

Macrina - I'm thinking of you a couple of hours travel south. One of the things I would feel strange about would be having Christmas in a different season.

My own homesickness at present is for the family home that I watched being built as a small child. It was the first full sized house my brother and I lived in and we were really excited about moving in and having our own bedrooms. Now it is being sold (settlement date is in 16 days time) and it's time for our goodbyes. We had a conversation today about how beautiful the wooden floors were which would have sounded weird to outsiders, but I was really glad there was someone who understood.

Huia [Tear]

Posted by churchgeek (# 5557) on :

Yes! As a Detroiter out here in California, I meet a lot of fellow Michiganians, even quite a few from the Detroit Diaspora, but I seem to be the only one who wants to go back. Others do think of Detroit/Michigan fondly, but they have a life here. I've always considered this temporary (I'm in grad school).

But on my annual visits home, and from reading news, I see so much changing in Detroit. It's mostly good news, believe it or not. But it's frustrating to me to not be able to be a part of it.

One thing I did to cope was to get a symbol of Detroit tattooed on my wrist, right where you find my pulse. You can see a photo of it by following the link in my sig that says "For Doctor Who fans" and looking at the next photo. (There are only the two so far on that site.) It's a line drawing of a statue that sits outside city hall, known as "the Spirit of Detroit." The drawing I used on my tattoo is used by the city, essentially as a logo.

People out here know that I'm almost always in a t-shirt that references Detroit in some way - t-shirts for places in Detroit, or that just say "Detroit" on them. And it's almost comical to some of them. (I actually had a bus driver laugh and say, "Really?!?" when I boarded wearing my "Detroit Snob" t-shirt! I just said, "Yes, really!" It wasn't a mean laugh, more of a surprised/bemused one.) But I do try to talk up my hometown here, where people often only hear the bad stuff about it.

People always forward stories to me about Detroit. And on more than one occasion, I've been given, as a gift, a book or two about Detroit...that I already own. But it still makes me happy. I pass the books along.

At least I'm usually able to visit home every year, so that the changes don't all come at once!

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