Travelling will make you homesick...
Travelling will make you homesick...
Southampton, England is my home. It's where I was born, where I went to school, made friends, went on holidays, experienced heartbreak, and moments of pure happiness. Its where I lead my life and its where my lovely family lived alongside me.
I now live in a totally different country, actualizing a totally different life, one I worked toward and dreamed of.
My surroundings change constantly, my mind is now filled with new images of sun-soaked beaches, breathtaking rainforests and wondrous animal life. Sounds quite pleasant right? Correct.
So you'd be surprised to know I have considered packing it all in and going home more than once.
Why? Because home is not just where my family is (I could murder for a mum hug) but its also where I felt comfortable, safe and created my own relaxed and predictable environment. There was consistency and ease.
I miss my bed, in my bedroom with its vaulted ceilings, and the cosy feeling I created in there. Tidy, clean, overly organized, that was how I liked my environment to be. Travelling is often anything but tidy, organized, or comfortable.
Sometimes you are lying in the cold of a damp tent, wide awake itching with bed-bugs (not confirmed but my god my sleeping bag is itchy) absolutely longing for your bed back home.
Now and then you get hit by a low mood, and feel challenged by your surroundings, and find yourself crying, wanting to just sit and talk with your family, have a cup of tea and revel in normality. Its the little things, the simplest of pleasures of home, that haunt you in the difficult moments.
You know that you will get to do them again one day, and slot back into routine, and you weigh up logically how much more you might appreciate even the monotony of regular life once you've had endless days of unpredictability.
But then a part of you also chastises your negativity and ungratefulness, how can you possibly dislike the beautiful and exciting life travel affords you?
Because its natural. Its natural to want to be comfortable, to want a good nights sleep, to crave a good meal, to miss the company of those who know you the best. It's human-nature to miss the nice parts of your previous life even if you actively chose to take a holiday from it.
But sometimes when you travel you get to experience the simple yet luxurious feel of home again, and create brief spaces that take you away from the ramshackle life on the road.
Today I am sat writing this in a villa that Taran and I get to live in for a fortnight, having the use of the pool, local beach, and being fed breakfast and dinner each day, for free (well for 4.5 hours work!).
Obviously your style of travel will no doubt influence how home-sick you get, and how often you are plagued by memories of all that was so beautiful about home that you didn't even think about at the time. But you will be thinking of home in a very positive, maybe overly rose-tinted light.
You will momentarily forget all the reasons that made you want to temporarily take leave of that life and that world, and so its important not to to languish in that homesick feeling, because you risk missing out on the very adventures you spent hours back then daydreaming of.
Travel might make you homesick, sometimes briefly, occasionally unexpectedly, but more often, not at all. But it is mostly a completely fair price of getting to see the world and embrace all it has to teach you.
I have grown and changed already, in 3 short months, and would not exchange any part of that growth to have been at home instead. Of course I wouldn't. I also wouldn't forego all the memories I am yet to make, all the beauty I am yet to witness, the people I am going to meet, the things I might possibly do....
So I say, feel the homesickness and do it anyway!
Thanks for reading!
Hannah and Taran here. We hail from Southern England, where we met online and are now realizing our mutual passion for travel here at Nomad'erHowFar. We discuss Nomadic Living, Simplifying your Life and Long-term Travel, to empower, motivate and inspire our readers. Get to know us here!
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