I am horribly homesick today

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

About 3 years ago I moved to Seattle from Burlington, VT. While I lived many places growing up (Africa, Minnesota, Michigan Puerto Rico, Texas, Kansas and Massachusetts to be precise) Burlington was the first place that I chose to live, rather than being part of what my parents moved around. As such, it held a mythical power in a lot of ways.

And I like it here. A lot actually. But Burlington will, I think, always be home to me. It is there that I met and married the love of my life, went to college, learned to be a chef, learned to use computers (and got my first “real” office job) and met some of the most important and dear friends that I am apt to see. In short, it is there that I became a man.

And there were good reasons for leaving at the time. My career was languishing and there were not many prospects at the time (although with the economic downturn that has not worked out quite as well as I could have hoped so far) and the harsh winters were really taking a toll on my wife’s health. All in all, it was the right thing to do.

Never the less, this place isn’t home to me yet. When I returned to Burlington for the first time since moving for a Christmas visit, a little part of me that I hadn’t known was asleep woke up. I felt more like me and was frightened at how easily I had shouted down that part of me and forgotten it.

Not much point to this post (I know that I have the right forum) just that for some reason I am really homesick and a little weepy and down.

2

[sub]Long post made at work, peeking over the shoulder for the boss coming by, may be disjointed and confused. Caveat Lector[/sub]

I made the decision to move from Canada so that I could marry an American in DC. My wife, realizing that I was miserable there, made the decision to come with me to Seattle.

We both miss (awfully!) our respective homes. She tears up thinking about her sister, still living 10 minutes away from the house where they grew up. I throw myself into a funk everytime I have to explain something about my homeland and realize that it can’t be explained…it mut be experienced.

Don’t quite know what I’m saying yet, except perhaps trying to give you a hearty and sympathetic “chuck on the shoulder,” and an “I-feel-your-pain, dude.”

At any rate, I don’t think you need to be concerned that this place doesn’t feel like home to you. There’s gotta be a reason for it; just moving here isn’t gonna cut it. And I can imagine that it’ll take some time to beat out the place where you met and married your wife, went to college, and got your first-ever real job.

But I’m willing to bet, that depending on how long you’re here…someday it might just be home for you.

Anyways, here’s the chuck on the shoulder I was talking about, and a “hope you’re feeling better soon” thrown in for free. Cheers.

Almost completely off-topic…I don’t know what you do here in town, or where you hang out, but a bunch of us from the Boards get together every Tuesday at the George And Dragon in Fremont for trivia, if you feel like joining us. We’re all witty, urbane, and intelligent folk and always looking for more. Although my wife isn’t a Doper, she has found that a regular Tuesday-night happenin’ with non-family people has given her something to look forward to and alleviated her homesickness a lot.

3

Is it raining?

A friend of mine moved to Seattle awhile back and that aspect of the place always weighed so heavy on him.

4

I would be surprised if I haven’t passed you on the street at some point without realizing it. My main job is doing tech Support in the Burke building right in Freemont, and I wash dishes at the Bouchee café (that crape place) right up the street from the used rug store and twice sold tales (also in Freemont). May be worth swinging in…

5

You have stated exactly how I feel.

I lived in New Jersey all my life (which at the time was 19 years) and moved in AR almost five years ago. I still get home sick a lot. I moved by myself, my whole family still lives in NJ. I went there last May, which was the first time since I moved, and it hurt to come back.

There are times I hear a song and it’s like a light whap in the heart. Perhaps in time it will all go away. I hope.

6

you’ve all articulated emotions that I used to feel enormously up until recently.

Y’see, I was born in Sydney (Australia) and grew up there and all the stuff that goes with that, including lots and lots of outback camping with mum and dad and sister over the years. I got a job straight out of Uni and started working. The upside being that I slowly got sent to exotic places (China, Hong Kong, …New Zealand), and worked on interesting things (theme parks, rock band tours, etc). The downside being that I worked and WORKED and WORKED!!!

I would work 18 hours days, 7 days a week and when I complained about not being paid enough and not having time to have any friends I would be soundly shouted down and mollified until things were more peaceable, then the boss would give me some minor token of appreciation to keep me happy until the next time I realised I still hadn’t had a full weekend off.

So, I was sent here to Singapore to work on a project. It had been six months since I’d had a day off (I kid you not). I arrived at the office on monday morning (late, because I’d worked till 9pm the night before after two 24hour shifts) only to be told, ‘go home and pack your bags, you’re going to Singapore on the 4pm flight.’

…Ok, I live for this adventure, I’m cool. Blah blah blah.

Things just got worse with the working and not living and all that. BUT… two days after I got here I met a girl, and she was sweet and funny and interested in me. So I was here for four months and realised that I didn’t want to go back to that dumb job. I quit and found a job here and worked hard and worked easy and did all sorts of exciting things and fell more and more in love with that funny, sweet, brilliant girl.

We got married and bought a flat and everything was (and still is) wonderful, but I’d still feel a-hankering for home. We’d go back every six months, but still, I missed home. I would miss home so much I’d end up in a crying heap sometimes. Hard for the wife to understand, but she tried. She’d been posted to HongKong just six months after we met, and she knew the pain of being away.

But that all changed the moment my son was born last year. It’s all begun to feel like home, and things are a lot easier to bear.

I still miss Australian food (more diversity than here, despite what locals will tell you), I miss my friends every single day(thank Og for the 'net, email has kept me in touch with people that would have long since slipped through the cracks, phone bills are high, butb they’re also a LOT cheaper now than ever before) and I miss my mum and dad and sister and mum’s cooking and dad’s jokes and all that jazz.

BUT, I have a family of my own now, and I have friends who trust me, who treat me as an equal, even though I’m an outsider. We hang out and we laugh and joke and brew up crazy schemes and it’s all cool, cos they understand me. Apparently geek culture supercedes the language barrier.

And the best part is, my wife has started looking at housing prices in Australia. She’s working out how much we need to save to move back there. Which means I need to stop buying so many toys and comics and DVDs, but if it means being with everything I miss, then it’s worth it.

But now I have to ask. Do I want to move back? I’ve been gone for so long (almost nine years now) that I’m beginning to have concerns about that move back. And I KNOW my wife will go through what I went through, so I need to make sure she’s really, REALLY ready.

again, not much point to this post except to say, it’s ok, I’ve been there, I know how it feels and it DOES get better. Don’t forget who you are, don’t give up on where you came from but at the same time, don’t reject where you are just cos you remember the grass being greener back home.

chuck on the shoulder and a hug if needed.

and now I’m a bit homesick too :slight_smile:

7

[QUOTE=lieu]
Is it raining?

QUOTE]

Seattle forecast for tomorrow: Mostly sunny, highs around 81. Just about perfect.

8

Yeah, I secretly think that the whole Seattle is always rainy thing is a myth spread to keep the riffraff out. Yes, it is true that the winters here are pretty dark and gray and rainy, but it almost never snows and it really is not that cold. Also, for the most part the rain is more of that mist kind so you can walk around and you just get damp.

Honestly the weather here is as close to perfect as I have encountered on this planet. Even in the summer when it gets hot, it is almost always a dry heat and it almost always cools off in to the 60s (or 50s) at night.

*quotes compulsively tidied by me.

9

One of the great joys of working in the cubicle next to Aguecheek’s (relax, the boss won’t care, she’s Canadian too) is that he reminds me daily that if times get too rough in my good ol’ USA there’s always the quick hop to Vancouver. Where he can marry me and get me a green card. Or something.

As I’ve typed repeatedly here on the boards, Seattle is the only American city I’ve ever loved. But I do get to missing my small towns: Chillicothe, Ohio (where I grew up) and State College, Pennsylvania (where I survived much grad school).

My father immigrated to the USA from Germany 40 years ago and gets homesick to this day. So I suspect that for those of us who have moved many miles, the condition is inevitable.

Still, for Binarydrone another hearty chuck on the shoulder, and maybe I’ll see you at trivia.

10

:smack: The one time I don’t preview, I mess up the coding.

And ixnay on the good eatherway! Shhh!

11

My bad. :smack:

12

Binarydrone, having driven once from the Adirondacks across Vermont to New Hampshire on Rt. 2, I don’t know how you ever left it to begin with. Vermont is like no other place I’ve seen.

Strange that you should bring this up today. I got a little teary myself for home earlier. I don’t know what brought it on. I’ve never lived more than 175 miles away from where I grew up. But I miss a town of 2,000 that existed only in the 1940’s and 1950’s. The people and places that made it “home” for me are mostly gone.