During my first month of college, I had no urge to go back home. I liked my roommates, I liked having freedom, and I liked being in a new place to see and try new things. After that month, I thought it would be nice to visit home, so I packed, took the long drive back, and got ready to feel at home (literally).
What I felt when I got home was something that I hadn’t expected. I didn’t really want to be there, I realized. This was strange to me because I’d heard of people going home every weekend, which implied they really wanted to go back. I thought I would feel the same way, that I’d be miserable in my dorm and overwhelmed with college classes, but I was surprised to notice I didn’t feel that way.
I didn’t want to go back to the dorm either. It has its pros and its cons. Yet I instantly regretted coming home because I knew nothing would ever be the same. I would never again feel comfortable in the dorm (my logic was since I’d gotten used to it, everything was fine, but stepping away from the situation made everything come crashing down). I felt like the dorm was a strange hotel room that I’d rented for a month, full of other strangers’ things surrounding mine. On the other hand, I also felt like my house had been sold to another family and I was just visiting for the day, ready to give someone my credit score.
I’ll admit it was nice to crawl into bed at the end of the day and finally sleep in a room by myself. I missed parts of my hometown – the food and the overall familiarity. It just wasn’t the same, because I’d moved on to a new home. It was as if I moved entirely and this nostalgia-esque feeling was just bitter, not bittersweet. But my new “home” would never feel like a home – just a summer camp.
I wasn’t sure where to go at that point. I knew it would take me a long time to get an apartment near school because I didn’t have the money. For a night, this horrible, lost feeling overwhelmed me and I sighed at the thought of returning to school.
What I saw was that things weren’t as bad as I thought they were. The more I spent time in the dorm again, the more normal I felt. When I got into the routine of my class schedule, I forgot about what could have been and focused on my assignments.
I’ve visited home again since that first time and I still felt a semblance of this feeling. It might never go away, not until I find a home of my own after college. Even then, it can be hard to let the past go and move away from a house you spent so much time in, with so many happy memories built into its walls.
This feeling of transition is a feeling new college students don’t hear about. TV shows and movies touch on the drinking, the parties, and the pajama pants to class, but not the “homesickness” that comes from considering yourself to have no real home. I hear about the homesickness and I hear about the freedom people love to have when they’re away from home, yet I don’t hear about how in-between two worlds you can feel.