My best friend and I at 18
I’ve been in Australia for 9 years now. It’s been 8 years since I’ve been back home for a (very brief) visit. It’s been around a year since someone from back home has visited me. Before that, it had been 6 years since family and friends visited for my wedding. I won’t count the visits from each of my parents after Bug’s birth as that was a stressful time and I was more focused on having become a parent for the first time.
Over the years I have watched several of The Geek’s family members go to the US for holidays while I stayed here, pining for home, missing dear friends. I’ve sat here for so long first saving for a house, now saving to keep the house. I thought moving overseas meant that I might have a well traveled life. I was wrong. I don’t even get to see the state I live in let alone go back home or anywhere else. I see other people going to my home country, or going all sorts of interesting places and I sit here. It’s hard. I know it will change one day … I hope it will change one day. I wait and hope that someone will visit again so I can reconnect with at least one person. But I also know that it is not exactly appealing to a single and/or child free person to hang out with people with small children on an overseas holiday.
Part of homesickness is missing people. In fact, its a HUGE part of it. I’m feeling that part a lot lately. A friend of mine is in Rome at the moment and he’s been blogging about it which has facilitated more interaction with him than I’ve had in years. Damon and I were a part of a pretty close knit circle of friends back in high school. Most of us have drifted apart over the years as people do but it feels more pronounced to me since I am also so very very far away. I miss them. I miss them all. They were a huge part of my life when the foundations of who I am were being laid. Sure, we’ve all changed and grown since then. Some more than others. But I still feel a really strong connection with many of those people despite how far away we are both literally and figuratively. Perhaps it’s *because* I am so far away. Who knows? For now I hope that someone else will come visit so I can reconnect and reminisce. So I can feel closer to home even if I’m not really very close at all. Visits from old friends do that. They help salve the homesickness even when they also make it that much worse. They’re the next best thing to actually going home and I’ll take all that I can get. So, who’s next to visit? Anyone?
You write that Damon’s blog has brought you closer to his life than you have in a while… and here I am reading your blog because I saw your comments on his… So this is what they talk about regarding Facebook and how it brings people together…
I still haven’t taken the plunge into the nets of the Nets, but I have savored the little email exchanges we have had in the few months. This year I have been realizing how important my friends are… and I missed people I hadn’t spoken to in such a long time.
I know my separation is not as profound as yours, so I do not think I have any right to compare, but I have experienced a similar type of isolation simply from living in Portland rather than Seattle, Olympia, or Poulsbo.
The dilemma I have had is the question of where to direct my time and energy. It takes both to keep connected to friends and both are limited. Before this fall, I was of the mind that friend time was best spent creating connections with the people who were around me, in my own town and even neighborhood.
I have made friends in Portland, rather dear ones, but lately I have found that old friends bring a special perspective, especially people who knew me in the time of my life when I was just becoming myself.
I feel like I’m coming into a new phase of myself, and I need to reconnect with the people who were with me at the beginning of this phase that is ending… my youth, I guess. I don’t mean that in a “when you turn 30 you’re old” kind of way… I’m just realizing that I’m thinking about starting a family and it seems like once you’re responsible for a tiny human being you just can’t act and think the same as you did before.
So, even though I am not planning a trip to Oz any time soon, but I would love to reconnect in a deeper way with you. It is hard to truly reconnect without *seeing* each other, but maybe I can learn to use all the gooey internet stuff instead of sticking to text, as I am used to 🙂 I’m open to trying to Skype or do some other kind of real-time communication.
I’ll have to ask The Geek about Skype. My computer has no bloody sound (annoying hardware issue that can’t be fixed without spending money we don’t want to spend right now) so I’d have to use his. Then there’s the time difference issue. Oh, and the issue of my being completely technologically inept and needing The Geek even to set up something as simple (you would think) as an RSS reader. So, yeah, I’ll have to get back to you on the Skype thingie. 🙂