For the whole semester in Bard I was waiting to go home. It sounds ridiculous, my friends constantly say, “Idiot, you are in the US, have fun.” But it doesn’t work like that anymore. Honestly, it has never worked at all. Being somewhere else doesn’t mean that, necessarily, you will have fun.
Yes, I’m talking about homesickness. Why do I have it? Well, for several reasons. I miss my country, my people, everything there. But I want to share with you specific details of my homesickness. Maybe you will find something relatable.
Food.
Okay, this is a vital part of anyone’s life, it should be strange that I start my list with this. And, basically, this part of my list will be the longest one. I miss everything about it. You can’t imagine how many emotionally positive memories I have which are connected with food. For example, once I asked my mom if I could cook our traditional New Year cake all by myself and she said yes. From that year on, the cake is my responsibility. It’s not the only responsibility placed upon me for New Year’s Eve, but the most favorite one. Or another story, how my best friend and I were cooking pancakes. It was so much fun, I love cooking with her. She is amazing in this and in everything she is doing. This is also a food story with my second best friend. She always comes with me after university and she is always hungry. When I ask her what to cook, she always answers only one thing – Caesar salad. Nothing else, just this salad. I have no idea why she loves it so much when I cook it, but she doesn’t eat it anywhere besides my home. I miss all this. I need more cooking in my life. In my opinion, the only bad side of my dorm is that we don’t have a kitchen properly. We only have a fridge and a microwave. It’s not enough for me.
Environment.
By this I mean the people around me in my everyday life and my cat. It’s hard to explain, but the most important thing at home is this sense of a big family around you. And now I am completely out of this family. I’m so far from my favorite people like family, best friends, again, cat (this girl is a huge part of my life), my classmates, my professors, even random people in streets. I need those people desperately.
City.
My heart belongs to St. Petersburg. That’s an unshakable fact. I can be anywhere in the world, I can love a lot of cities like Rome, Milan, Berlin, New York and Helsinki, but my heart always belongs to my hometown, St. Petersburg. If you’ve never been there, you should plan your trip immediately. One of the most beautiful cities in the world. Honestly, I’ve never been out of my hometown for such a long time, and its really hard for me.
Creative process.
I can’t explain this feeling, but in the country of freedom and opportunities I just can’t create anything for the sake of creating as I usually do back home. Usually I write short stories, short notes, novels, make video clips, short films, create Photoshop collages and other things. But here, in the United States, I can’t do anything besides things which I am expected to do. Like articles, essays, plays for playwriting. I feel like I have nothing left inside after completing all required tasks. I don’t know whether it's good or bad. I feel empty being somewhere else but not home.
Laziness.
I need the possibility of being laid back. Back home you can have a spontaneous day off for yourself and watch some stuff on Netflix or anything which is available in Russia (I’m not sure that we have Netflix, actually, and I don’t know how I will survive). There’s also eating pizza, drinking hot tea and sleeping, sleeping a lot. Here, there is always something happening, all the time. I have to be there, and then run there to do this and that, and then run back to do this and that. Crazy life. I can’t say it’s bad, and also I don’t want to be lazy again when I come back home. But I need this possibility, the feeling that anytime you can just stop and calm down, take a laptop, turn on Sherlock or Breaking Bad and chill. I don’t have this feeling here, while studying abroad.
Basically, this is my homesickness. Probably next week I will write how much I don’t want to go home because I will realize that my beautiful experience of Bard will be over less than in a month. Who knows.
Maybe I will be crying in the airport because I’m leaving the United States. Maybe I will be crying because I will finally be home. And someone who loves me so much and waits for me there will finally hug me and tell me that everything is fine. But that’s already another story…
