Hi, Abnormally Normalers; I wrote a bit of a lament for my childhood home over on my Medium blog, and I’ve been pushed to share it here.
I wonder if you’ve ever felt homesickness for somewhere you have moved on from?
I’m rudderless and drifting with no place to call home. Because home is more than just mortar and bricks; it’s a place where we feel welcome. Somewhere we belong. Air that emanates acceptance irrespective of the mould from which we are cut.
My husband is my emotional home. But I still crave a geographical and spiritual home. Somewhere to unpack my things, knowing they may not be boxed up again for several years. Such a novelty for me. I’ve lived a life of packing and moving.
Maybe it’s the nomad within my heart that leaves me feeling so unsettled. I’ve shape-shifted through an undecipherable number of houses over the years. Perhaps each move has been a metaphorical shedding of my skin.
But this transience is tiring. And I find myself hankering for the remote coastline in the north-west of Scotland, where I spent several years of my childhood.
Is it possible to be homesick for somewhere that’s not been home for over 25 years?
Here in my temporary home in Ireland, my husband and I often talk about where we will settle.
My heart belongs in Scotland, although we are open to other countries. I feel a pull—an invisible tug at my soul to reacquaint me with the northwest of Scotland. I want to immerse myself in those hills and shorelines that I once knew so well—a nudging towards an ethereal stillness.
This place was the canvas of my turbulent teens. A place where I endured my parent's divorce and threw questions into the wind about who I was and what I was to become.
I had the freedom to ride a friend’s pony up the hills behind my house and also sit by the water’s edge, allowing the rhythmical lapping waves to sing a lullaby, soothing my melancholy heart while caressing my toes.
I’m being drawn to the memory of a vastness of space. Somewhere, I can be both invisible and known depending on my mood. A place of inclusion and connection based on the strength of our hearts and generosity of our spirit, not the clothes we wear, the car we drive or the status of our bank accounts.
A place that has visitors drive for miles, passing the odd house or the entrance to villages that are tucked several miles down a single-track road, and they wonder to themselves what the hell people who live there do. Where do they work? How do they spend their time?
I attended the local primary school for a few years. There were 25 children between the ages of five and 12 descending from a 20-mile radius. Our nearest shop was five miles away. The nearest town rested 17 miles away.
Our house settled on a hill overlooking the ocean and was surrounded by magnificent wildlife, such as sea eagles, red squirrels, porpoises and otters. To many, it struck a chord of isolation, but others saw my old home for what it was: a place of nourishing richness.
Wealth is not always gained through money.
My memories of this land are more expansive than the human population inhabiting it. In my transformational years of healing and growing, I feel repelled by crowds and peopley spaces while simultaneously being drawn to simplicity.
“If you want to know where your heart is, look where your mind goes when it wanders.” — Imam Ali
There’s a yearning in my soul to settle on the thermal of life that was once so familiar. A rhythm of gentleness and softness. No rushing, deadlines, competing, burnout. A place where simply being was enough.
I am now a stranger to this land.
The family home was sold many years ago, and I have lost touch with the individuals whose strands of being make up the tightly woven community it is.
Maybe my current loneliness and disconnection in a place where I lack social and spiritual cohesion is fueling this longing. Is this ache of isolation giving rise to my lust for community and connection and triggering my hankering for days gone by?
Sometimes, when I can’t sleep at night, I google the old village, the epicentre of the community.
I find websites and social accounts of people or local businesses and find a cacophony of arts and crafts and musical inspirations or social enterprises doing good for the locality. I see faces beaming back at me from my screen who, despite their current form, awaken my nostalgia, and I remember them as five-year-olds, or 20-year-olds, or those in age with my mum.
And then I shrivel. Do they ever think of me? Am I remembered? Was I known? Was my departure seen as a rejection of them? A perceived unworthiness.
Would I even be welcomed back?
Maybe I’m romanticising things. Because among all my thought concoction of community, belonging and inclusion, for the most part, I always felt like an outsider there. The area wasn’t big enough for my twin sister and me, with whom I had a challenging relationship. So I lived in the shadows and eventually slinked away, leaving her to claim her stake while I searched for a new land.
I harbour both a fear and a curiosity about stepping across the threshold of the local pub, the Friday night hangout for adults, kids and dogs—the place of my weekly glass of cola and packet of scampi fries.
Capitalism may have caught up to that precious corner of the world. Maybe it’s become more about doing, achieving and producing than before. Maybe second homes are popping up like weeds, pushing out the soul I long to be reunited with.
Perhaps I’m hankering for something that no longer exists. Maybe the sea of misfits, waifs and strays and those unsubscribing to the ridiculousness of modern life has given way to monetisation and exploitation of the land's natural beauty.
Who knows. I do know that if I don’t go back and see for myself, I will never know. But whether I unpack my bags and return my spirit to this land and water remains to be seen.
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Beautiful! I long for still, open spaces, too. It will be interesting to see if you return and how you find it if you do.