Sunday evening: sitting at one end of the Undergraduate Teaching Labs with a cold box of Hopkins Cafe food, adjacent to an empty chem lab... the space felt too quiet and strangely empty. I adjusted my AirPods, thumb hovering over the call log info button with my mom. 43 minutes. Six more than the day before.
Yet it wasn’t just the yearning of a warm embrace, familiar voice or home cooked meal I found myself yearning for. It was simply home.
Upon my curious search of “define home,” Google instead automatically outputted “define homeostasis.” Oddly enough, that felt like the more fitting option. “Home” is difficult to define when it is more than the physical. While “What is your hometown?” can be a straightforward answer, “What is home for you?” draws a plethora of others like belonging, vision, community, love, security or sanctuary. The unexpected suggestion of “homeostasis” made me realize how much internal stability built through familiarity grounded me in times of homesickness, especially the things I could control and surround myself with, like watching sunsets, attending Bible studies, immersing myself in a solid read or shooting hoops. I realized the interests, and especially, routines I had established in New York, could be continued in Baltimore, comforting me as if not everything had changed. Breaking larger tasks into smaller, approachable wins brought a sense of satisfying consistency and familiarity, alleviating both my mind and heart.
To this end, I learned the difference between comforting myself and distracting myself. Calling my mom helped. Subconsciously pushing those feelings deeper and replacing them for temporary adrenaline rushes didn’t. Neither did romanticizing home, my head space stubbornly stuck in New York, contemplating the things I could and should be doing. Sometimes hanging up calls felt like blowing out a dying candlelight. But this cycle of expectation and unhealthy idealization only deepened my homesickness because when the phrase “There’s no place like home” became my measuring stick, I wasn’t just missing home. I was waiting for college to end so I could return to it. Homesickness thus called me to be honest with my feelings and the ways I could face it proactively rather than suppress. I am still working on being more present and open-minded on campus, to find gratitude in the learning and exploring that comes from moving away.
What had personally made homesickness even harder was seeing those around me adjust so smoothly. The ways they were exploring and embracing Baltimore, constantly out with friends while staying on top of their schedules and seemingly piling more commitments by the week brought shame to my internal distractions.
Then, one afternoon shuttling back from Baltimore Penn, I remember noticing a fellow student, suitcase in hand, visibly sighing before stepping off towards the steps of Commons. Maybe they were exhausted from traveling. Maybe they were dreading the incoming workload post spring break. Or maybe they, too, were leaving the home they loved. Homesickness isn’t rare. It is often just not openly shared.
Moving away from home, to me, used to be a period at the end of a sentence with an indented next paragraph: a clean, abrupt break, leaving the writer grasping for some suitable next word. Reflecting now, I see it as an ellipsis. It was never about diminishing or replacing a home full of what I had already created and experienced for another. It was about having the courage to let home expand. A blinking last dot of the ellipsis waiting patiently for me to move at my own pace to discover home-building as my own architect.
My end of first year was repeatedly met with the question “How was it?” Surprisingly, my answer often landed on “I haven’t gotten to explore Baltimore as much as I would like to.” This underlying reflection that Baltimore has the potential to B-more in my life proves a new seed planted. I am reminded that homesickness eases and resilience is built.
I still call home often, and whether they last 43 minutes or not, I am now comfortable being the one to say, “Got to go, bye mom.”
Katie Park is a sophomore majoring in Molecular and Cellular Biology from Poughkeepsie, N.Y. She is a Sports Editor for The News-Letter.
