Cornfields as far as the eye can see. The only store is a Casey’s, a gas station with arguably the best pizza in the Midwest. The only thing to do is race your car down a backroad and hope you don’t hit a deer. That was my childhood. A tiny village called Brimfield, smack in the middle of Illinois. I lived on a farm with no one even close to my age for five miles in any direction. I left for a reason. I couldn’t wait to get out, I’d always dreamed of living somewhere bigger, somewhere with things to do. But now that I’m here, I can’t stop missing the place I swore I’d outgrown.
I thought homesickness was a freshman thing. I remember sitting in my dorm room crying because I couldn’t go home for months, and then when I finally did, I was devastated to leave again. That was supposed to fade, right? You adjust. You grow out of it.
I stayed in Boulder all summer. I didn’t go home for Christmas this year. And still, homesickness crept back in like it never left. Turns out, you don’t grow out of it. It just changes shape.
Freshman year, homesickness was about missing my family and not being used to being alone. It was loneliness. insecurity, and wondering if I’d made the right decision.
This year, it’s deeper than that.
I’m not just missing home, I’m afraid I’m losing it. I don’t know what’s happening in my family’s lives anymore. I’m not there for the random Tuesday dinners or the inside jokes that form without me. I miss the big moments, but I think I miss the small ones more. The stuff that doesn’t make it into a FaceTime call.
And then there’s this: I catch myself calling Boulder “home” now. Not Brimfield; the place that holds every memory of my childhood — just Boulder. And I don’t know how to feel about that. Like I’m betraying something. Like I’m outgrowing a version of myself I wasn’t ready to let go of yet.
I don’t have a neat conclusion. I’m not over it. I still call Boulder home and then feel a pang of guilt, like I’m betraying the cornfields and Casey’s pizza and the backroads that made me who I am.
But I’m learning that it’s okay to hold both. To be proud of getting out and to wish I could go back sometimes. Those things don’t cancel each other out.
So if you’re feeling this too, if you’re happy but still feel like a piece of you is missing, just know: you’re allowed to miss home. Even when everyone, including yourself, is proud that you left.