Homesick

It’s been one month since I moved to New York City. If I had to pick a word to describe how I’ve been the past week or so it would be: homesick. 

I feel like that word has a negative connotation, usually. And if not negative, then…pitiful, perhaps. It certainly doesn’t evoke happy or hopeful feelings. But it's strange, because my homesickness isn’t the type that you get your freshman year of college sitting in a different state in a dorm room with someone you met twenty-four hours ago. It’s a mixture of happy and sad, longing and contentment. Because you have to love something in order to miss it, right? 

Don’t get me wrong—New York has been incredible. Even being here such a short time, I have seen my friends more times than I can count. I’ve found coffee shops and restaurants that are already starting to feel like mine. I’ve had game nights, movie nights, and even a sleepover with my best friend. I've read in Central Park by myself on a beautiful Tuesday afternoon. I’ve wandered the Metropolitan Museum of Art, lost in a world of masterpieces and the classical music playing through my headphones. It’s been magical and wonderful and soul-filling. 

But it's also been hard. 

I miss my nephews. I miss my dog. I miss my parents, coming home to my high-school bedroom every night. I miss the comfort of the streets I learned to drive on. I miss Seraphina Coffee, and Lux, and 32Shea. I miss my high school best friends, seeing them every week, laughing till our sides were sore about some stupid thing we haven’t gotten over from four years earlier. I miss being an adult in the city that I used to run around barefoot in the grass in. I miss the mountains. The sunsets. The cacti. The warm breeze after the sun goes down. Sedona. Flagstaff. The magic of the desert. The smell of rain hitting the dry dirt. (All things only Arizonans can truly understand in this same way). 

And yet. 

The memories are more sweet than bitter. They remind me of how lucky I am, how much I have to be grateful for. I will always remember Phoenix fondly, I’ll always thank the desert that raised me. The people, my family and friends, who made me. And I know that I’m the girl I am today because of where I came from. I can live in NYC now because I was born and raised in Phoenix, Arizona (and there's a little OKC splashed in there, now—that place taught me a lot, too. But that’s for another time). 

I think the homesickness is good. I’m grateful for it—it keeps me connected, in a way. The ache is what keeps me tethered to my home, it’s the part of my heart I left behind. The part I can, and always will, come back to. I think it’s a sign that things are going in the right direction. You’re supposed to miss your home, the things you know, the people you love. But through it all, I know that one day I’ll miss this, too. The unfamiliar streets will someday be familiar. I’ll make new memories here. In five or ten or fifteen years, I’ll be laughing with my college friends about something that hasn’t happened yet, just like my old friends and I laugh about high school, like a distant memory. 

Musings—

“In this spot, where I sit, I am a part of all that is, all that came before, and all that will become. 

In this spot, where I sit, how many creatures—big and small, human and animal—have trod where I now rest? 

Just yesterday, perhaps, a man sat here, reading. A man with a life and a history I’ll never know, and yet we both shared this patch of grass. 

Hundreds of years ago, maybe, a woman sat, maybe, watching a child run across the green. 

What deer have grazed here, 

What ancient beast, long-dead for thousands of years now, made the earth shake where I now sit? 

What flowers grew here before humans stepped foot on this vast land?

And now me, all this time later. 

And tomorrow, maybe, someone else. 

And in fifty years. 

One hundred. 

I’ll be gone, but this spot will remember. 

And maybe that person, sitting under the trees, 

(or maybe this park will be concrete by then, too, as many things are, now)

Will think of those who were there before, 

And, without even knowing, think of me. 

For now, here where I sit, I remember them,

All who skipped or rested or strayed here before, 

And they are with me, too, 

In a way. 

I think of them, and in doing so, bring them back here. 

We share this space, 

Across time, 

And they live, in a way—

And, in a way, they always will.” 

—A poem I wrote in Central Park on August 27, 2024