Homesick

I’m very bad at small talk. I am awkward and a little shy, a bad combination for casual conversation. A typical small talk question I often struggle to answer is where my hometown is.

The idea of home is a complicated one. Is it where we’re from, or where we are now? Is it simply the place we cook, sleep, wash or something deeper and more emotional? (Can you tell I’m bad at small talk?)

When I get asked that question in England, I usually just broadly say “I’m from Germany.” Rarely does anyone dig deeper, except to say “I didn’t even recognise you had an accent!” (I probably have adapted the accent so quickly because I always need to fit in.)

When I was doing my undergrad in Germany, an hour away from my hometown, I could be more specific about where I was from. “I’m from Wilhelmshaven, by the coast”, I’d say. Often, I’d quickly add “But I was born in the US”. I’m not sure why — was I worried they’d think I was a boring small-town girl? That I hadn’t gotten very far? Or maybe, the place we are born in actually matters to us in a way — the original hometown, the place we first saw in the world. Maybe it gets imprinted on us somehow, as ‘home’, even if I have no own memories of that first year I lived in the US.

We moved to Germany when I was one, and then, when I was eight, we moved across the country to the coast. I had just started school two years earlier. I was slow at making friends, already bad at small talk, but I had finally started warming up to people. After the move, I had to start that process all over again, except now I was stepping into a school with pre-formed groups and friendships. I constantly felt like I was intruding, like the others shared memories that I wasn’t a part of.

This is all just to say I never truly managed to feel at home in Wilhelmshaven, the small town by the sea. I left as soon as possible, and I tried to leave my awkward self behind, so I rarely talked about my hometown with new friends.

When I moved to England, I made fast friends with my housemates and university classmates. I suddenly understood what Marina Keegan meant when she talked about the opposite of loneliness. And isn’t that what home is? The opposite of loneliness, feeling a sense of belonging, of being loved?

There are probably many different versions of home. The home you were born in, the home you grew up in, the home you found a feeling of belonging. They’re all part of us, they make us who we are. But back to your question. I’m from Germany, have you ever been?