Something happened to me today that caught me off guard and I don’t know what to do with it.

I felt homesick for a place I never thought I’d ever miss.

For some vague backstory, I ended up leaving the place I lived my entire life for multiple different reasons: the living situation I was in wasn’t healthy for me, someone needed my help elsewhere, money was tight and it was expensive there, etc. But the reason with the most weight on my decision was because I just needed to leave. I didn’t know who I was there; I didn’t have the opportunity to grow and live just as me. So, I left. I was scared, and unsure, and didn’t have a lot to my name and didn’t know how I was going to make it or if I would be forced to move back to the place I wanted to be set free from, back to the people who would help me if needed.

It was a little funny at first because I never really thought leaving was possible. I knew I didn’t want to stay, but there so many other factors stacked against me at the time, that I never thought there would be a window to try. I became complacent, not happy, with being there and began to just think, “Well, this sucks but this is my life now,” and tried to find ways to make it bearable. I was so sure that leaving wasn’t possible, that I never cinsidered trying. Let me be clear, there were people there I loved deeply, and who loved me. People I know would have tried to do anything to make it better for me had I opened up to them about how I was actually feeling. But I couldn’t because they were attached to the reasons I had to leave: the memories.

Everywhere I went in that place, the memories followed me. The pain. The fights. The drinking. The silent judgements and sleepless nights and the living on eggshells programmed not to do things for myself but for the comfort of others. The having to make myself smaller so I could fit into the narrowest, most jagged cracks of that place without getting too beat up. The fires. The heat. Oh god, that oppressive heat. It’s hard to physically get away from the problems hidden behind closed doors when you can’t even step outside without passing out. The constant feeling like I had to be somebody they approved of, or at least I had to restrict my actual thoughts and feelings so as not to ruffle any feathers.

The pain, never ending and unyielding in its torment of my mind, body, and soul. I used to be known for always being contagiously happy as a kid. As an adult now, I search relentlessly inside of myself for that same happiness hoping that some of it, genuine and pure, made it out with me. I hope that the happiness I feel now isn’t only superficial, but sometimes it’s hard to tell.

All of this was the reason I had to leave the place that was my home; that was familiar to me and had the people I loved there. This was one of the hardest decisions I had ever made, and while there have been times where I’ve wondered what would have happened if I stayed, I couldn’t be happier with where I’m at overall. Which is why it came as a shock to me in every way when I felt myself feeling homesick for this place.

Where I work now sometimes requires me to communicate with other business across the country. Lately, I’ve been having to reach out to more places around my old home; I had to before when I started this job so it was nothing new to me. I would look at a map online of the area and determine who best to call for the reason I needed. This hadn’t phased me before other than recognizing city and street names and feeling a vague sense of familiarity.

But today, it was different. As I scrolled around the map of not the city I moved from, but one we used to visit on special occasion together, something hurt inside when my eyes roamed around street names I knew and walked down. I sat for a moment staring at one in particular and a memory flooded my mind of a sporting event shared with my dad. I clicked and dragged my cursor around the city some more until I found another area I didn’t realize I was looking for. I stared at that area and remembered an outing around the holidays filled with fun and unexpected surprises for all of us and cooler weather than we were used to.

I continued to click around the map of the city for several minutes, my original purpose long forgotten in lieu of chasing this sad feeling that sunk deeper into my chest with every place I could easily name and picture in my head. After I exhausted the places I knew in that town, I searched for the one I left without even knowing why I was doing it because all I felt in that moment was pain and longing.

Once my map focused in on the place I spent my whole life hating, I zoomed in to soak in every detail. It took me a moment to find my bearings, but once I found the specific street I was looking for, everything fell into place. I looked around recognizing the names of the buildings they thought important enough to label on the map. Memories of those places flooded my mind so quickly I barely had time to separate any one from the other to fully immerse myself in it. Until I saw that one street: the one I spent my life on. I put the street mode view on and waiting as a very pixelated version of my childhood home focused into view.

It was an old picture, taken when we had cars we had gotten rid of years ago. The front yard was immaculate, thanks to the combined lawn maintenance and gardening my parents worked so hard on. The front of the house looked sun-worn and faded, but still good. The weather was bright and undoubtedly, unbearably hot on the day this picture was taken. We had camping equipment set up in the front yard either getting ready for a trip or just having returned from one. Every window was closed with the blinds drawn, and the front door was shut tightly as if it hadn’t been opened in years. I stared at the windows on the top floor that housed our beds and the things we loved; remember what we saw from the perspective of being inside looking out of them. I remembered the fun we did have inside of those rooms together; I ached for the things that kept us company on those long nights or having my siblings so close. My heart felt heavier with each passing moment, missing the things that can no longer be.

My eyes moved to the garage door, also closed, and my mind filled the image in of what was hiding behind it. More tools than I could name or tell you the purpose of. Tons of mementos from days even before my time and technology that was on its way to becoming obsolete. I could see the door opening in my mind; could hear the exact way it creaked and groaned while rolling up and how that sounded when you were in one of the rooms right above it as I stared at this image frozen in the past. I remembered playing in the front yard with hockey sticks and scooters and chalk and other games we begged for but rarely used while one or both of our parents looked on from chairs sat just inside the garage throwing toys for the dog.

As I sat there in my office absolutely not doing any of the work I was supposed to be, starting to feel my throat tighten with the familiar effort of trying not to cry, I remembered us as kids. I remembered the things I used to love, and the fun we did have sometimes. I remembered how it felt before having things like bills and loans and buying furniture (which is way more expensive than it really should be). I remembered what it felt like to be a kid and have someone else to worry about those things, even if that worry and stress leaked out and contaminated everything around. I remembered what it felt like to have us all together, to have us all close even if we were what hurt each other the most. I used to know everything about my family, and now I can only guess and rely on the few times a year we see each other to fill in all the gaps from the last visit.

The more I remembered, the more my heart hurt and the harder it became to sit there and act like nothing was happening. Like my whole world wasn’t shaking in that moment and threatening to break me apart with the quakes.

But then my memories started changing. I looked at the driveway again, but this time I saw two people – one trying to leave and the other standing in their way. I saw those same kids, now a little older and a little more independent, leave together in the middle of the night not knowing where to go but just knowing they couldn’t stay there anymore.

My eyes drifted to one of the cars in front of the house, the one that was stolen and trashed and returned to us a husk of the thing it once was, marked up and dirtied and unrecognizable. The one we cried over as it was towed away for the last time, not because we loved it that much but because it represented a more innocent and less problematic time of our lives. It helped us make some of the better memories we had, and someone took it, destroyed it, and dumped it somewhere random without a second thought.

I looked at those closed windows that held us in and that shut front door that concealed so much of what was happening and the sealed garage that held secrets behind it only we knew, and I no longer saw the same fondness over this house. The way it started to look here, for a lack of a better word, was lonely. It looked closed off and reserved. It almost looked as if there wasn’t anyone who had actually lived there, but rather like it was staged.

I closed the tab on my computer and let my coworkers know I was taking a break, not too long after we opened which caused some confusion, I’m sure but no one objected. I don’t just get up and leave often, so when it happens, they let me.

I stepped out and took a walk around the block, silent tears slowly falling one by one down my face. I wondered why this feeling of homesickness ever even started this morning when all I was trying to do was my job. I wondered why I couldn’t seem to pull myself away from walking through memories via a trip through Google maps. I tried to wrap my head around the great sense of warm fondness I felt at first for a place I was sure I hated, even if the feelings did eventually turn sour. I was surprised to feel for the first time since finally leaving that place, a sense of wanting to go back.

I walked and wondered why I cared so much about it at all. There’s nothing left there anyway now; everyone has moved away, some of us farther than others. The only reason I would have ever had for going back there, the people I loved, are gone and now reside elsewhere. So why the hell was I feeling so much longing for being back there?

Was it because it was just familiar territory? A place and situations I knew like the back of my hand, even if they weren’t all good?

Was it because I wasn’t actually longing to be back in my past in that place, but rather I was still grieving for the trauma it gave me and the things I never got the chance to have?

 Was it because I long for us to be close again, proximity wise and in relationships?

As I walked and neared the front of my office again, I wiped the last couple of tears from my skin and took a deep breath while coming to the conclusion that still makes the most sense to me: I spend so much time focusing on the negative aspects of my childhood (thought there are plenty and they are the cause of some of my issues I work on today) that I never really took time to appreciate what I had.

I explain myself to trusted people in terms of what I went through and how it feels like it’s shaped me now. I speak and think very negatively of my childhood most of the time. But it wasn’t all bad. The bad feels like it outweighs the good even still, but I never even consider the good much anymore. And maybe that’s what that was. Maybe as I sat there staring at an old image of my childhood home and some streets I once walked and drove on, all of the good feelings of my old life that I spent so much time actively pushing away in favor of the pain to the chance to come flooding up demanding to be recognized.

The positive memories and emotions burst through the small recess of my mind I kept them in at a time when I was caught off guard, forcing me to feel all of them at once. And while I felt them, it wasn’t the same as the first time I felt them in those memories, and I knew it. I think that’s almost the best way to describe longing: to feel the same emotions you once felt, but in a different way that makes you miss how they felt the first time.  

Sure, the memories and feelings I was experiencing in a matter of minutes started intermixing with negative ones, and I felt those too. But for that brief time, I felt the good. I felt the positive – I felt the happy I sometimes search for again, even if it wasn’t in quite the same way. I felt the peace of knowing and remembering that there were blue skies for a smaller, younger me even they didn’t last long. There was healing I think, in remembering that there were times when my smile was genuine and I felt everything was alright after all. I couldn’t stop thinking about this the rest of the day while I strived to get actual work done. Those feelings stayed with me all week. I don’t think I’ll really have many more times of feeling homesick for that place, and I still don’t know why now, out of all the times I’ve been back there since leaving or looked at a map of the place, why this was the time that broke me down a bit. But at least I think I know now that there was healing in that homesick – a kind of healing I need badly.