I left 2 years ago for college. I used to live in a small-ish town (well, more like a small city but life was much more slower there) and it was pretty okay overall. I had friends, spent most of my childhood there, and I didn’t really had any issues with it growing up apart from the immense boredom I felt.
I felt stuck there and all I wanted to do was get out. I finally did after I graduated highschool where I decided to go to college in a much bigger city.
Now life here was fast. Like really fast. Hella fun too, and I can finally do the things I wanted to do that I couldn’t back home.
But I never felt home here. Why should I? It’s not the place I grew up in.
But recently I’ve come to realize I don’t feel at home ANYWHERE.
I’ve spent way too much time away from my hometown that everytime I come back I feel… slightly out of place. There’s nothing for me there and all my friends have moved on or we grew apart. Some people I still talk to there don’t really feel like friends anymore. They only know me as that weird guy from highschool when I’m not that person anymore.
I’ve grown so much and everyone back home still has the same idea of me back in highschool. I guess that’s why I started to distance myself from that.
But I miss it, ya know? Being a stranger in a new city is one thing, but feeling the same thing back the same hometown you grew up in? That’s something else.
Please help me understand. I’m so lost and confused.
12 comments
It’s normal to feel like you’ve grown out of your hometown. Personally, I have probably spent a month total in the town I grew up, since I left a decade and a half ago.
If you want to feel at home somewhere else, you’ll need to just put down some roots and make it a home.
Your horizons have broadened so you have experiences and views that your past friends do not, but you have yet to find a place to set down roots.
It’s okay. You’ll be just fine. This is meant to be the time for you to grow and if it doesn’t feel a bit untethered then you’re not doing it right.
Embrace the fact that you are no longer the same person and propel yourself into developing the new you.
That feeling of ‘home’ comes from your sense of community.
If you stay integrated with your home town’s community online, you can keep that sense alive to a degree, but part of moving to a new place is establishing yourself there.
Most towns/cities have civic-minded groups that keep common areas clean or volunteer to improve things. Smaller towns have Lions or Elks; bigger cities will generally have neighborhood associations’ or community centers. If you join one, you’ll find that sense of home will start to develop again.
I think that happens at multiple stages throughout life. You live somewhere for a while, get into a routine, and that becomes “home”. But any time you leave and come back, you aren’t the same person you were when you lived there.
Life is all about change, even if we don’t always notice it.
You’ve changed and it hasn’t.
you can’t go home again.
you can, however, put down roots in a new place, and feel at home there. when you’re ready.
this is normal, and expected. cliche, even.
Run away… And never return.
I would take it as a sign that you still need time away, either temporary or forever. I moved from my home town at about the age of 18.
Home is where you make it.
I grew up in the sticks, and it wasn’t until I moved to NYC for grad school that I had ever lived along a road with lines painted on it. Since then (about 20 years now, living in a different city now), going back “home” is a depressing time warp. If I see one of my high school classmates, they’re behind the counter at a gas station or bagging groceries at the supermarket. I return to see my mom and brothers, and for less-frequent funerals now that all the elders I had any relationship with are gone.
Truth is, you really aren’t that person anymore because you made decisions and a life that weren’t tied to that one place. It’s growth, which isn’t to say that those who remain don’t grow; they’re just less likely to have done so in ways that improve their lot. Some folks can eventually return and make a life if they want to, but that doesn’t mean it’s the same.
This is why some people flee to *and* from small towns. The fine line between refuge and trap is a matter of how you got there and how you choose to frame it.
Eventually everything becomes like this. My hometown is unrecognizable. I spent a lot of time in NYC as a kid — it’s totally different now. Hell, it was already different by early 2000s.
It’s a strange feeling, but you get used to it, and it’s kind of good. Sometimes you can entertain the fantasy of going back. But when everything you knew really is gone, or at least very different, there can be no fantasy. It’s gone forever. All that’s left is just what really is. Which turns out to be the only thing that was ever here to begin with.
I’m an immigrant. I don’t feel at home anywhere, now. I think this is pretty common frankly
Your hometown wasn’t “home” because of where it was located and the buildings in it.
It felt like “home” because of the people you shared it with and the period of your life you were all experiencing together over the years. All of those pieces made up the puzzle of “home” for you, and now most of those pieces are off doing their own things elsewhere.
You miss the feeling of belonging to something familiar and comfortable, something that is uniquely you but that you still share with others that know it as their home as well.
You don’t feel that now, because you’re in a transitional period in your life. You’re in school, you’re feeling out what it means to be an adult, you’re starting off a new chapter in life. You don’t feel at home in college because I think you know it’s not your home. It’s a place you are experiencing now, but will transition away from sometime in the near future when you graduate and move on.
The feeling of home takes a long time to build. You have to develop & nurture relationships and share experiences in it for that feeling of home to take root. If you want it, you’ll get there again, I promise you that. It takes time and experience tho.
I will say though, that the feeling of “home” changes as your life changes. When you’re a child, home is where your parents raised you and where you developed into a young adult. Once you graduate college, home becomes that first house or apartment where you make new friends and start off your career. As you get more established, home becomes where you and your partner live, have kids, share experiences, endure traumas, all of that. It feels different at each stage of your life. But, it’s all unmistakably home.
Congratulations you’re a traveler. I recommend leaning hard into it. Meditation and exercise helps.