Happiness and Homesickness

There is a nasty little bug that has reared its head recently (and no, it’s not the giant cockroach that invaded my bath last week). I keep on trying to banish it, but it comes back again with a vengeance. I know a lot of people here suffer from it, but they don’t like to talk about it. No, it’s not the ‘flu or some weird ‘downstairs’ affliction – its homesickness.

The thing is – we are living the dream, aren’t we? From the outside in, our lives are supposed to look like this:

We wake up every day (well, mostly!) to sunshine and blue skies. We spend our weekends on the beach, or travelling to new places. The breeze is warm, the food is good, life is just easier. Or is it?

The problem is, it’s really hard to talk about homesickness because you feel really dreadful for complaining! I mean, we are so incredibly lucky to be living here, doing what we are doing, and also it was our decision to take this opportunity and move, so it just feels…well, ungrateful to say out loud that you are finding things difficult, or missing home.

My best friend Kitty said something very wise to me once which I have never forgotten. She spent some time living in Spain when she was younger, and when I told her how lucky she was, she said “well, the thing is, that everyone wants to get away from the nine-to-five, the routine of their everyday lives. But what you don’t realise until you do get away from it all is that the nine-to-five is the same everywhere. It’s still your life; you are just living it in a different place, only without your family and friends”.

How right she was!

Little things tend to set me off. Take yesterday – I was in a great mood, then suddenly a song by Anthony and The Johnsons popped onto the iTunes, and I had this sudden almost physical jolt of homesickness – my parents bought me the album a few years back because I mentioned once in passing that I liked one of their songs. When I make a pot of tea after finishing work, I automatically reach for two cups (yes kitty, still!) then remember it’s just me.  I make in-jokes to people here and then stop cackling with laughter when I realise they don’t get the joke and just think I’m weird. I do stupid things like paying $5.00 for a tin of Waitrose essential chopped tomatoes from Cold Storage even though a $0.80 local branded tin is exactly the fricking same. I could go on.

My point, I suppose, is that I think it’s ok to feel homesick – just as long as you temper it by being grateful for where you are, and remembering that you can just fly home if it gets really dreadful. So, in an effort to turn my introspection into something vaguely productive, please find below Jessy’s Magical Patented Anti-Homesickness Remedies.

Jessy’s Magical Patented anti-homesickness Remedies!

(i)                  When you get homesick, go to Cold Storage. Go and stroke tins of Waitrose canned vegetables (or Kraft reconstituted cheese products if you are American. Or bottles of Beaujolais or something if you are French. You get my drift). You might get some really weird looks, but trust me – nothing beats a mini-bout of homesickness than being surrounded by familiar mundane objects.*

(ii)                Don’t comfort eat (at least not to excess). It never works. Always makes you feel much, much worse afterwards (you ought to know that I am telling you this after inhaling an entire bag of fifteen treat-sized Cadbury Dairy Milk bars. And yes, I feel DREADFUL)

(iii)               Get Skype! If you have it already (which you probably do) use it more often. Set up ‘Skype Dates’ in advance with your friends for the following week, so that you will have their undivided attention for an hour on Sunday evening to look forward to. Yes, I know that the time difference is a bugger; but, really, with a little forward planning it doesn’t have to be too much of an issue. So settle yourself on the sofa with a pot of tea and a bit of cake and gabble to your best friend / parent / whatever for an hour; trust me, you’ll feel a squillion times better afterwards!

(iv)              Keep busy. You know those evenings when you know you really ought to go out but you just want to curl up on the sofa with a packet of digestives and an old BBC Period adaptation box set? This is fine once in a while, but if you are succumbing to the call of the sofa every night, you need to shake yourself out of it. Make a point of accepting every invitation that comes your way for a week, even to stuff you don’t really want to do; I bet you’ll be surprised by how much fun you have, and you actually won’t have time to feel homesick.

(v)                Get your favourite magazines from home delivered to your apartment here. Yes, it might be expensive, yes it’s horribly self-indulgent, but a long bath and a flick-through a proper magazine from home can work wonders.

(vi)              Ask your friends to send you lists of reasons why you shouldn’t be missing home at this precise moment in time. Really, it only takes a few emails beginning with ‘it’s minus three degrees and I have a two-hour commute to work’, ‘I haven’t seen my house in daylight for three weeks’ or ‘the Tube drivers are on strike again’ to make you think, “actually, it’s not that bad here after all”.

(vii)             If you do all of the above and still feel homesick, download and read this year’s budget come March.  If that does not impart enough doom and gloom to make you want to stay away from the UK for a while, I cannot be of any further assistance to you at this point in time.

 

*do exercise caution here – window shop, do not buy. You do not want end up sitting on your kitchen floor weeping because you have just blown your entire weekly housekeeping budget on horrifically expensive bottles of imported pink Fairy Liquid

Ok – end of self-indulgent waffle.  So now I have made you read the whole Homesickness part – terribly sorry, but the Happiness comes tomorrow morning! (I am tired now, and in far too much of a weepy, dreary, Victorian lady-style mood to actually write much worth reading, and I do not want to waste your time any further)

Sorry for the dreadful post. D-minus – will do better tomorrow.

Lots of love!

Jessy xxxxxxxx

 

PS: Just for funsies, here is a picture of the giant bath-invading cockroach, for your viewing pleasure. I was far too scared to take an actual picture at the time; but rest assured, this is an entirely accurate depiction of the creature in question.