Morning sunshine creeps through the shades of my dorm room window. I am awake, yet my eyes stay shut, and my soul is just barely coming out for the day. I roll over onto the other side of my bed; the sheets follow. As I rise from the mattress, my feet touch the cold tile floor, sending a sliver of ice through my body. My soul is brought to life once again.
The energy within me grows heavy. I am hit with the realization that I am not home in New York – I am away at college in my dorm room in New Jersey. My body is still transitioning to the new energy that surrounds me, and a part of me is longing for familiarity: the backyard of the house I grew up in, the feeling of the wood floors of my bedroom beneath my feet.
We are now at a point in the semester where many of us may begin to feel homesick. Being away from the energy of your hometown is difficult, especially if you’ve never lived anywhere else. And homesickness is intuitive; it’s our body’s method of telling us that it’s craving the energy of wherever home is. College is not just a physical adjustment, but also a spiritual one – our bodies must learn the ability to share energy between two environments. This is precisely the feeling of wanting to be home and at college at the same time, and the ability to live in both places will take some time.
As well as becoming aware of this change, trusting what your individual energy tells you is essential. I went home this past weekend for the first time since I moved in. My family had driven to Hoboken to visit me a couple times before, but I was longing for the atmospheric feeling of what home was – to have my soul physically be there to absorb the energy that I was missing.
For those of you who live too far to plan a weekend trip home, I understand how dealing with homesickness may be different for you. Perhaps you have a memory box of items that you associate with home, or you eat out in Hoboken or Manhattan at a restaurant that serves the food you like. Getting off campus is a popular choice for battling homesickness; exposing your body to another world of energy other than campus and home can help you to feel refreshed and stimulated. All that’s important is to remember that homesickness will eventually go away, and becoming more aware of this change in energy is necessary to making this transition easier.
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