Homesickness is a State of Mind

The title of the post represents my feelings about missing home.  Homesickness is never something I've suffered from whether on my first Brownie Pack Holiday at the age of 8, my first experience of working abroad for an extended period on Summer Camp in the US when I was 19 or my "gap" year in Oz at the age of 31.

However, as Saturday dawned with grey skies and torrential rain, I felt as low as I think I ever have done and just couldn't drag myself out of it.  All manner of thoughts kept whirring round my brain... why had I given up a perfectly good life to travel to the other side of the world, where I have no job, little money (the cost of living here being so high & the exchange rate poor) and putting the people I love most through turmoil in the process?  What happens if no-one offers me a job?  How long do I stay here before I go back home and get a proper job again in a market where I'm generally employable?  What happens when my money runs out, because I can't claim benefits here for 2 years?  Will I ever afford the lifestyle I want out here even if I get a fantastic job because everything is so expensive? Why did I sell so much stuff back home because I could be back there in 3 months needing to buy it all again?  What will the international removals company charge me if I end up going back and just want my stuff delivered to my new abode in the UK?

I'm sure a psychoanalyst would say all this kind of soul-searching is perfectly normal, but for me, usually a positive bunny who sees only potential and opportunities, it's hell.  I don't think it's even anything as specific as missing particular people and given that my friends are scattered across the globe anyway, there's no reason I should feel any further away from them here than I did in the UK, but somehow this kind of bleak train of thought doesn't respond to logic.  I think a lot of it has to do with not having a job, as we do have a tendency to define who we are by the job we do.  Not having a job seems to mean we lose our identity, have nothing to focus our energies on and nothing to help define our weeks versus our weekends... and that's without taking into account the people you meet at work, which means you get regular interactions and potentially make new friends without really having to try too hard.

In the end, I braved the torrential rain (I got drenched in the 30 seconds it took me to get to the bus stop!), headed into town and settled down to job-hunting online.  Yes, I know it's Saturday and I should take a break from "work", but there's nothing like concentrating on something to help get you through those dark days.  So a generally productive day was had and I felt ok until I returned home and thought "so this is what life is for me now, one room with a few bits of my stuff and a few more bits of cheap stuff I've just bought"!  Talk about feeling sorry for myself!  However, I am very lucky to have friends I can turn to when I'm feeling like this and Skype is amazingly useful, so an hour and a half later, having poured it all out to one of my closest friends, I was feeling substantially better, even more so when I realised that 1.25hrs of voice call on Skype had only used 50Mb of my monthly data allowance!  I can feel a few more Skype calls coming on!!

So, be warned, homesickness or some kind of migrant depression, can hit you when you least expect it, even if you don't think you're susceptible.  When it does, I'd thoroughly recommend a chat with a good friend who can help put everything in perspective and persuade you that you will make lots of friends in your new country, even if that day feels a long way off at the moment.

Do I still believe homesickness is a state of mind?  Essentially, yes, but I do think your state of mind can be quite fragile when you put yourself in testing situations and that it doesn't necessarily respond as logically as it normally would!  So cut yourself some slack and try not to beat yourself up about it.