Home Is Where the Heart Is

Before I started university I've lived with my mum and brother for many years. Half of those years were in Bristol and the other years were us moving around London quite a few times. Our mum was always more strict than most British parents so I never had the chance to socialise quite the same way as most teenagers my age have. Gaining this kind of freedom once moving into university halls with 9 other people has taught me what it really means to have such close friends. 

The first several days moving temporarily back to my mums all I felt was that same loneliness and isolation I'd felt before and I immediately wanted to go back to see my friends in Leicester.  Having moved places so many times as a small kid I never had this happen to me. Every time I'd enter a new school or neighbourhood I'd always have that knowledge deep down that I would be leaving my friends some day without seeing them often or ever coming back so I never really got close to anyone like I have at uni. 

I've had to adjust again to 'my room' and just to living here temporarily. Talking to my old friends just over simple everyday things has cheered me up a bit and I'm getting used to being here again and being my old introverted self... but I know I've changed a lot. Being here is just like retracing the old path that I had taken from what feels from so long ago. I don't feel at 'home'. I feel like I'm just visiting another place as if on holiday. That is until I start talking to old friends and the experience feels familiar again...

Thinking about it now, the feeling that I'm trying to describe is called 'home sickness'. Which is weird because I've been so confused about where my 'home' actually was for this past year but it was through this kind of experience that I've discovered that home is where the heart is and that friends really are the family that you choose.