Summary
The place a person grows up in hoards memories – the first step, first day at school, first friendships. It forms the person you become, moulding your identity around every experience it provides.
The place a person grows up in hoards memories – the first step, first day at school, first friendships. It forms the person you become, moulding your identity around every experience it provides. So, when the place you call home suddenly becomes something you visit once or twice a year, it leaves you struggling, grasping onto the person you once were whilst desperately trying to figure out your identity away from home.
I spent the first eighteen years of my life in a little market town called Thrapston in the East Midlands. The summer before starting university, my family moved to Scotland, leaving behind our life in England. Despite having known about my parent’s desire to move for years, it still felt like a punch in the gut when it actually happened. All of a sudden, their trips to view houses turned into something real, the house that saw me grow up sold to another, and I was left reeling in the wake of this change.
A new low for me is crying, drunk, on the porch of my old house the day my family left for our new home, trying desperately to get in because it’s my house, my home.
It’s nearing two years since I’ve lived in Thrapston, and I still feel a sense of displacement. There were only a few months between moving houses and starting university, so I never really had the time to feel settled, leaving me floating untethered through life, unsure of how I fit into my new ‘normal’.
Coping…
I have found myself falling back into habits and interests I held when I was young in an attempt to stay ‘me’ – rereading books I liked as a child, watching movies and shows my Mum and I used to love, listening to music friends introduced me to. I regress into daydreams about childhood pets and old friends. Everything I seem to do has a connection to who I was in my hometown. How do I continue being ‘me’ without retreating into myself? This is a question I still have not found the answer to, and it leads to extreme feelings of loneliness at the most inopportune times.
For most, the Christmas break from university means returning home, to friends and family and familiarisation. For me, it means loneliness as I wait desperately for the one week I am with my friends back in our hometown for New Year’s. Only for the fun to leave as I step onto the train ‘home’, the familiar feeling of longing taking its place.
This is not to say it is all bad, my new house is in a beautiful location, my parents are happy, I have my brother still living with me, and my pets love it here. Most of the time now, I am content with who I am here, but there are still those moments where I wonder what life would be like if I still lived at home. What would I be like? Would I be happier? It is not good to dwell on the ‘what-ifs’, I know this, but it cannot be helped at times.
Who Am I Now?
I suppose there must come a time when the life I had in my hometown must weave into the life I lead now, a time when I stop clinging to the past and appreciate what I have now more fully. The adult I am becoming cannot be stuck trying to revive the childhood that preceded it. The clean split between childhood and adulthood can be found in the move from Thrapston to Scotland, and it is becoming clear to me that my identity is evolving as I grow, that the intense feelings I harbour for my hometown may just be me holding onto childhood with everything I have.
While this may be true, I do still believe that a person’s hometown is a large part of their identity, which it makes leaving painful. Figuring out who you are outside of it is difficult and it hurts, but it is necessary for everyone.
Who am I outside of my hometown? It’s simple, I suppose. I’m me, but slightly different.
Image Credit: Pexels.com
Braw Magazine co-editor for Stirling University’s Brig and a third year English and Journalism student.
