Visiting Home

[Naira]

Hello everyone!

I am going back home later today, 8 months since I moved to another city. During that time, I've been back only for a day for a cousin's wedding.

I feel very happy, since my boyfriend and family are all in my hometown and it feels like I haven't seen any of them in ages. However, even though I am here for only 8 months, I think I have already begun feeling like I have two homes. I mean, even though I miss my boyfriend very much (and also my parents), I enjoy being here on my own starting out a new life.

This made me wonder, how do you people feel about visiting your hometown or any town your family lives in? I remember my mother saying that even after 30 years in her new city, i.e. my hometown, she still feels that her real home is in her village where she lived until she was 15.

What about you?

P.S. I'll spend 3 days on my visit. I have some PhD-related obligations while I'll be there (a presentation and a paper deadline approaching) so I hope I'll spend more time with my loved ones rather than at my old office at the university!

 

[Tora Ziyal]

Enjoy your trip!

I came to Baltimore to go to college and never left. It has felt like home almost from the beginning. It is where I have made a life for myself. I haven't visited the two towns I grew up in in at least twenty years. They're definitely not home.

 

[An Officer]

I think for me, it is a matter of quality of life, the places I have loved best are the places where I have felt the most comfortable, rather than the length of time spent there... although every place I have lived still pulls at the heartstrings a little... nostalgic memories...

Having said that, perhaps it is more us, and our frame of mind and how we perceive the world during certain phases of our lives... you can be in a hell hole, and be quite happy, or the most pleasing surrounds and not be at home at all... I think it is that old adage, life/home is what you make of it...

 

[Deranged Nasat]

There's certainly great appeal in surroundings that are familiar, even if they're not exactly comfortable for you. I've never been comfortable at home - still aren't - yet I enjoyed returning whenever I left university during the holidays. The simple reality of arriving back in familiar haunts after an absence gave me a sense of personal history, a feeling that the world had made an impact on me, even if I hadn't made much of an impact on it. I suppose that's the appeal for me - a sense of belonging. Not belonging to the place in question but belonging to my own life. "Ah, here I am again. I was here, and then I moved on, and now it's good to step back into something that left a mark on me". Going home is always the best part of being away, and going back the best part of visiting. Nostalgia is very strong with me (then again, most emotions are intense where I'm involved).

 

[1001001]

I grew up in the same house my whole life.

I left for college when I was 18 and never moved back.

I still refer to Los Angeles as "home", even though I haven't lived there in 28 years.

Nostalgia? Familiarity? A state of mind?

I'm not sure...

 

[Spot's Meow]

My family moved a couple of times when I was young, so I was never in one home/city longer than about seven years. Interestingly, the one I consider my "hometown" and miss the most is where we lived when I was ages 7 to 14, not the first place I grew up nor the city I left when I went to college. For a while after I left, I felt like I had three homes, my new one, the one where my parents lived (and I had lived during high school), and my hometown. I would attend the local festival in my hometown every fall, even though I had to beg family and friends to come with me (it was pretty small and hokey), and sometimes I would drive through it on my way to my parents' house just for kicks.

Now, 8 years after I left for college, I rarely visit my childhood hometown as it really only exists in my memory now; the actual town has changed enough that it doesn't feel like the same place when I go back. My parents' house also doesn't feel like home, as the way things are done there has changed as well; the furniture is different, they have new dogs, my old bedroom was painted, and they just engage in different kinds of activities now.

Where I currently live with my boyfriend feels the most like a home, but honestly I don't feel quite at home here either. I don't much like the area I'm living in, and we plan to move away as soon as my boyfriend finishes his PhD in a couple of years. We don't own a home, we rent an apartment, and our existence here feels impermanent and transitional. So really, I guess I don't have any home yet. Hopefully our next move will be a more permanent one, into a home and a city that we love. Though where that is, I have no idea.