An unexpected feeling has become apparent now I have been at university for a couple of months, one which I never truly anticipated. University, with all its knowledge and growth, forces a form of limbo on its students that is never explained by anybody. It’s a strange feeling moving to a completely new city and knowing nobody, it’s exciting and uncomfortable at the same time, yet no matter how hard the first few weeks are, you adjust. Soon the normality begins to sink in, routine takes place and it becomes simply another way of life. The shock is that returning home then after settling in is almost as unsettling as the move originally was. The warmth of home, the feeling of family and a familiar setting exuberate happiness and safety, yet the town and its inhabitants no longer feel the same. The streets, the old walks, the nostalgia laden scenes feel like a dear friend you haven’t seen in years, a part of you, but one in which you no longer belong. The caresses of the sea breeze feel nourishing yet external, not a part of the bloodstream you used to feel connected you to this peninsula. The dissonance between myself and home that ethereally appeared is something once unfathomable, yet disturbingly real.
I am an extremely lucky student. I was lucky enough to share my chosen city of study with my girlfriend, gratefully allowing me to merge the warmth and familiarity of home with the unfamiliar, despondent face of Bristol. Yet this does not change the unsettling feeling I am left with after visiting my home town for the first time since I left. Everything is exactly the same, yet I feel different. Even after a mere four weeks.
Yet halls are far from a replacement, what is abundantly clear is that Bristol will never be my home. It’s impossible to compare them, whereas the city’s streets run white with people rushing every which way like salmon, home runs stagnant as a canal on a midsummer’s night. Selsey provides seclusion and isolation, two things I’ve always deemed essential to me, whereas Bristol provides nightlife and excitement, an abundance of midnight strangers and endless possibilities. It is new and exciting, yet I am not connected to it. It could be left in an instant without a second thought, it could never replace the docile, sluggish life of home. But it has changed me. I still retain the influences of home, yet I am no longer content to merely exist. I need movement and energy, aspiration and possibilities. As much as I love my home, I fear I have outgrown it.
Selsey, the town of my adolescence, shall always remain a part of me. The road I was raised on, the house I was raised in, shall always be mine. No doubt I will regularly return, for no matter how much I may have changed I could never, I would never want too, stop going back. The people there are far too important. The feelings that overcome me when I return there shall always be safe and familiar and happy, yet I am no longer a part of that town. It’s not true that you can build a home wherever you want, your home is given to you from birth. It is as much a part of you as your personality, it is unchangeable and infinite, and no matter how much we derogate and curse our dawdling towns that exist secluded from the rest of the world, we love them more than words can express.
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