homesickness/loneliness

Tuesday, 15 September 2009 at 04:06 · Filed under Everyday life

I don’t really know if people can understand what I mean when I say that i’m lonely in Chile or slightly homesick. Being exposed to so many different things, customs, and people is very exciting.  I love this experience, do not get me wrong.  However, you cannot help miss certain things about your own country that you have grown up with for twenty years or the people in your life that have always been there whether it be for a laugh or for a cry.

But, see, every since being at Notre Dame, my “homesickness” slash loneliness has followed me wherever I go: my home in California with my parents, my home “under the dome” in Indiana, and now, my chilean home in Santiago, Chile.  I am not really sure if anyone would understand what I am trying to explain unless you have been through something like this “experience” I am having.

I have basically spent the last two years approximately 1,862 miles away from home.  I have grown into my own person at Notre Dame, my “home” despite whatever complaints I have made..  But, this past semester at Notre Dame especially, I have felt a rather loneliness due to my huge differences compared to the rest of the student body.  I mean, I’m a mixed, feminist and Catholic female from California that comes from (perhaps you would call) a middle class family..and I definitetly do not fit the average body type for females Domers – this is what most would NOT call the typical Notre Dame student.

But, my point is that I do not fit in necessarily with the Notre Dame community in that I am very different from the norm; thus, sometimes, it can be lonely, trying to feel “at home” in a community that I have lived in for two years.  It is hard to explain and I am sure this does not make sense.  But, when I am at Notre Dame, I miss home in California.  Yet, despite my family being there and the memories I share with them since my birth, my home in California isn’t really my home anymore.  Because when I am there, I miss Notre Dame – my friends, my freedom.  I don’t seem to fit in with my family quite like I did before 2007.  I have grown up a little and have changed.  And so have they just as time does not stay still.

Thus, it does not surprise me, that after two months of being about 5588 miles away from California, I get frustrated with cultural differences: the people staring at me on the bus, not being able to express myself clearly or use sarcasm, and simply not making friends like I had expected.  I mean, I love it here..it is just not easy, of course.  I am slowly getting into the groove of things within the household and with classes.  But, it isn’t my home.  It is my temporary vacation in my eyes.

And at times, it gets frustrating and lonely…just for a few moments, until I refocus and realize where I am at and what I am doing because it is simply amazing and still surreal to me.

I just wonder if I’ll ever feel at home again…wherever that may be..

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