Homesick

There are certain times of day, during certain months of the year that the living room of my home is bursting at the seams with sunlight. Two of the four walls are made up of windows, and though the views outside of them are nothing spectacular by any means there’s always plenty to observe just beyond the glass. I watched a pair of squirrels chase each other up and back down the lone tree in our front yard, amazed at the precarious grip they had on the bark which allowed them to scale its surface so effortlessly. One reached the bottom and took off through the grass, the other in tow, across the street and out of view. Where do squirrels live? Do they have little squirrel homes with little squirrel families? How do they know which squirrel home is theirs?

“I want to go home,” I said to my mother. She looked down at me with a mix of confusion and amusement.

“You are home,” she said.

“No, not this home. I don’t know where… I just want to go… home.”

“Well, I don’t know what that means.”

Neither did I.

Tocka (pronounced ˈtō-skə) is a Russian word that describes the sensation of the painful aching of one’s soul longing for something unknown. There is no word in English that adequately captures this feeling, though I have felt it my entire life. It is always there, right in the pit of my stomach. It pulls at the invisible reins around my heart and lungs, making it difficult to breathe.

Stop and smell the roses… your life isn’t so bad… how can you be so sad all the time?

How can I possibly enjoy the floral fragrance of metaphorical roses when there is simply no room left inside my lungs? They are being crushed in the vacuum this darkness has created inside my ribcage. Doctors tell us the cage our bones have created around our delicate, vital organs is there to protect us, but what of the dangers that were born inside the walls of our own hearts? The inescapable demons pulling us further and further into ourselves? The black hole in our gut devouring the light from within?

I can see the world is beautiful - I am not blind. I know that my life isn’t “that bad” - I am not ungrateful. I do not want to be sad all the time - I am not stupid. The simplest way to explain my situation is that I am currently “Out of Order” and unable to process your request. I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. Sincerely, Management.

My childhood was not unlike so many others. I had two parents, two brothers, a house in suburbia with a fenced in yard and plenty of neighborhood kids my age to play with, and zero privacy. Still, I was alone.

I felt disconnected from nearly everyone. I preferred to sit with the adults at social gatherings and listen to their meaningless pandering that I couldn’t relate to, than play with the other children with whom I also couldn’t relate. Sometimes it was because I was “too sensitive” and other kids were too brutish, other times it was because I was perfectly content sitting in silence, lost in my own thoughts.

There were nights I would spend what seemed like hours staring at my own reflection, trying to understand what I was, exactly, and why I was here. I would suddenly feel anxious in the realization that I am a self-aware being with independent thoughts and emotions, and that maybe there was no greater purpose other than to live and die. How many 13-year-olds have late night existential crises?

I could not wrap my head around any of it. The world was full of other self-aware beings with independent thoughts and emotions, and none of them seem bothered by any of it! I found their lack of concern insulting. Was I the only one unsure of their place in this world? Was I the only one that felt hopeless at the idea of a meaningless existence? I began to feel like I was part of a sick joke in which the punch line was completely lost on me.

That homesick feeling for a place that did not seem to exist persisted. I yearned for it, whatever it was. Nothing I did and no place I visited could fill the void within my soul. If the house I have lived in my entire life did not alleviate my homesickness, what could?