Homesickness by Diamond Tat Senior Campus

From time to time there are always people who suffer from homesickness. So many stories have been told about this but I never really understood how it felt. In fact it is true that you can’t really understand it unless you’ve experienced it yourself. 

How ironic it is when a person leaves a not very good situation and to go somewhere else, somewhere a lot better, but then just longs to go back where it’s not so nice. Well, now I know, I know why people want to go back to that not very nice situation. Simply because you know where you stand there. 

To describe my feelings now, they would be black, blacker, blackest. I now long to get back to where I came from, to the people that I know so well, the streets that are so familiar – and I just left them all behind me like an old garment never to be worn again. 

The first few days were okay, great even. They were like vacation trips. Everything was new and my curiosity helped me to immerse myself so much. I didn’t care about the past. But just then reality started to kick in; I started to feel wrong. At night I lay down and my body rested and my mind refused to take in anything else. I thought about home, family , friends …a tree, a small milkshake, a ten minute break and a chit chat with friends … all these things were forgotten. Then suddenly, a sensation would come over me, I imagined  myself in the kitchen, my grandma’s kitchen, the wonderful smell of grandma’s special soup, which was of course cooked by my grandmother and that was why it pleased me so.  Slowly I drifted into dreams like that. 

The next day it was a sunny morning. Finally, it was good, good because after days of gloomy skies, the sun finally shone. However that wasn’t the kind of sun that made everything curl at the edges, more like a weak, pale sun which was worn out from trying to shine so hard. Still, better than nothing. 

I’m no longer in a tropical land, and that realisation has now entered my life like a flow of water divided formally in two. One is my past, so predictable and comfortable, and the other is my future, a grey and blank seascape with no boats in sight.