homesick

I grew up homesick, even when I was at home. I would be sitting at the dinner table, surrounded by family, when this feeling of acute unbelonging would sink into my chest. I'd lose focus of what was going on around me and stare at the clock suspended over my kitchen oven and desperately try to come up with what I was missing.

What am I missing?? It was unmistakenly homesickness - the same feeling I would get at a sleepover that would make my eyes well up with tears and call my mom, asking if she could please come pick me up. Only this time I was seventeen, and my mom sat right beside me.

Sometimes the feeling would go away, and I could go about my day ignoring what happened. Other times it seemed to never leave, and I simply swallowed my homesickness and felt it harden in my chest. And I learned to walk around with a hardened, lumpy, stale feeling inside of my gut that I simply did not belong.

I would feel homesick at my house, at my school, surrounded by friends, anywhere. And it was always the same thing. Losing focus on what's going on around me, voices fading, a weight sinking into my chest and hardening, feeling alone and not knowing why.

And I really really dislike myself for this. My parents love me so much, I have friends that care about me, there is no reason why I felt like this.

My freshman year of college I met a boy, and my homesickness went away for a while. We would go on drives through the mountains, windows down, his hand on my thigh, my hand cutting waves through the wind as I hung it out the window. I would turn my head to him, and he'd already be looking at me, softly smiling. We would lay in bed together, and I would trace the freckles on his back as delicately as I could, sometimes with my hands and sometimes with my lips.

It's my second year of college now and nothing has changed. I still date him and I still love him. But now, there are times where I will be sleeping in his arms and wake up, a heavy feeling slowly sinking into my chest. And I feel homesick again.

And I guess at this point, I've come to the conclusion that wherever I go, whoever I'm with, I don't belong.