HOME SICK
The concept of home has always been a tricky one for me.
Moving across the state when I was 10 sparked the question inside of me, asking what home really is. Does it have to be tangible? Is it a feeling, a community, a smell? Was it in Hollywood, where I ate orange juice popsicles and caught fat grasshoppers perched atop the rusted wagon in my backyard? Or was it in Southwest Florida, where my life took shape down curving roads and in warm Gulf waters? Maybe it was at the flight park, creating worlds in the orange groves and the tops of trees, the only place that’s ever felt like mine. I never figured it out, because I always felt the pull to get out, to jump into the stock photo on my desktop, to traverse landscapes, to embark on epic quests. I knew early that I wanted to leave Florida, but as my life here grew, I understood it wasn’t because I hated it. I had seen the endless beauty here, really seen it. And I wanted to do the same everywhere else.
Despite having such a conflicting idea of what “home” means, the homesickness I felt when I was in LA was hollowing. Missing my parents, their company, and their rhythm. Missing the warm blanket of Florida, a fresh dose of green in the air at all times. I know that decades from now, the intensity of that experience will still be helping to grow and guide me along my path. I learned more about what I need to feel safe and at peace, and how to create a cozy milieu with little familiarity.
I spent a lot of last year thinking about homesickness. Aside from it being a beautiful color on the wheel of human emotion, it’s a huge hindrance to my epic life plans. I’ve wanted to travel for so long, dreamt about perusing other cultures at my leisure, set into motion another huge life change revolving around that very dream. How is it possible to feel so sick with longing when I’m away from home and still want to leave? I unpacked and repacked this question more than my bags, and I had at least 5 homes in 2023. attempts to count on fingers, loses track, gives up
During my time at my parents over the holidays, I think I found another piece of the puzzle.
Sitting on the couch, 4 cranberry muffins deep, drowning in plush blankets with the winter air meandering in, I started to feel that aching longing again. That gut-wrenching pull that kept me frozen in my LA apartment had followed me back to Florida! The audacity was astounding. Had my heart not enabled location services? There was a Lauren-shaped imprint on the cushions for crying out loud. It was unbelievable.
Then a few nights later, it resurfaced. My dad, watching an old black and white with a bowl of popcorn when I came in the door. It hit me like a brick wall. The very scene that felt so distant and unattainable a few months prior was literally before me. I was here, in the present moment. So why did I feel so sad? The realization settled over me like the humid summer nights I crave to be wrapped in. The homesickness told me that the cure could be found back home. That if I’m sad, it’s because I’m missing something that I left. But apparently, I’ll miss it just the same while it’s here. As I lay in bed, a puddle of tears, missing something that was all around me, I knew that the ache was not in the absence, but the inevitability. When I was in LA and missing home, I was missing the me who had lived those moments. The me that grinded through 60 hour work weeks to achieve a goal. The me whose best friends were her mom and dad, and not even in a pathetic way. The me that spent my days dreaming and driving and learning. In the months since I’ve left LA, I’ve missed my life there with a ferocity. Not because I want to go back, not at all. But I had something beautiful, and painful, and full of life. So much life happened while I was there, and just like my life in Florida before I moved to California, it’s gone. With the inevitability of summer storm, it comes and it passes. (Unless you’re in Socal, then it’s an inevitable drought. Sorry guys.)
The person that I am right now, having these experiences, I’ll never get her back. She is here for a moment before she makes space for what must come next. Staying in the same place forever doesn’t keep that from happening, because time inevitably goes on. That thrill you got speeding down winding country roads doesn’t hit like it did at 17; there’s a Publix where the park used to be; the night walks down endless beaches are with different people.
I haven’t ever been someone to shy away from hard feelings. I want to feel it all, the full spectrum of the human condition, with all its heartbreak and subtlety. To be steamrolled by feeling is to be here, on this earth, and in this body. That being said, I have shit to do. Homesickness having me in a chokehold simply will not do. So it’s nice that I’ve come to the conclusion that to miss something is to have lived it. To anguish for a person or a place or a couch or a hilltop or a familiar feeling is to acknowledge its brevity. It’s the ultimate act of appreciation, of gratitude.
I leave on Saturday for my next tremendous venture. I’ll be living abroad, teaching English, exploring and making connections. Growing from our compost, collecting more. Latin America to start; I’ll be back in Barva, Costa Rica for the foreseeable future because we simply couldn’t get enough. (Calm down people, of course Shelbie is also going.) We were both hired by our #1 choice language institution, and we’re planning on taking on additional remote teaching work as we get settled into our new[est] home. The butterflies of excitement took flight inside me yesterday; I could simply burst thinking about walking to soccer with Shelb or snuggling up in the kitchen with our fourth cup of coffee. As excited as I am to start along this path, I’m even more excited to share it with the people I love. These past few months have been a cacophony of pain over the pieces of my life that are gone, and joy over the light that’s filled the spaces. And when the homesickness comes, as it inevitably will, I plan to lean in. To let it move through me. To keep letting in new and beautiful things I’ll have to mourn someday.
lau x
p.s. it means the world that you read this. thank you.