Drastic changes are sometimes perceived as overwhelming, even scary in their premise. Changing your area of living, getting separated from your family and even leaving your country of origin is rarely experienced by an average 14 year old. 

However, that is my experience. At 14 years old I hugged my parents, knowing that starting from that evening we’d be divided by the ocean, a 12 hour time difference, and 3000 miles. 

Besides missing them (I have not seen my parents for 4 years), I have also missed watching my niece grow up and seeing the birth of my nephew. 

Sometimes a feeling lavished with despair wakes up in my soul, making me realize how much I had missed, including things happening in the lives of my loved ones. It awakens, at moments triggered, at moments random. It’s hard to describe. Something inside you screams from agony, with that anguishing longing for home. Home that was lost and is unrecoverable, since what was once in your memories disappeared in the river of time. 

Sometimes what someone says reminds me of it. Sometimes a song, a line in the book — or even someone discussing their future family vacation. I envy them at times: but then think about cherishing what I currently own. 

Emotional numbness caused by this is rarely visible. Yet, your chest hurts, thoughts are constantly rushing through your head with memories once insignificant, yet worshipped nowadays. Saint Petersburg that once existed is nothing, but a lingering memory, since so much has changed – and I cannot see it as my home. This longing has almost a paralyzing extent, destroying something that I always had: motivation to go forward. I try ignoring the news and pictures from my homeland: the more I look at it, the more I realize how much I lost. 

Currently I am a senior. I graduate in a month, moving from my home again and leaving behind a family that cared about me for years – my grandparents. Therefore, homesickness and petrified anticipation of the future is constantly targeting me, bringing melancholy and sadness in the most simplistic moments. When my grandma is walking the dog, watching her Russian melodramas, or when my grandpa is telling the same story for the 1000th time I start to think “I’ll miss it”, so the deep pain wakes up, immobilizing me in unprocessed grief. 

I know how this process goes. I learned to live with the pain, to embrace new experiences and enjoy what’s around me. Though for someone subjected to it for the first time, without family, friends, or support, homesickness could feel like drowning. 

Seniors tend to undermine and postpone this realization. Truthfully, not many people understand what it takes to change your routine so radically, and what impact it brings on you. 

When seniors, including me, think of college they don’t imagine feeling helpless, lonely, and trapped.   

In reality, almost 70% of college students experience homesickness according to PubMed Center, which contributes to poor adjustment, mental struggles and, in the worst case, dropout. Even when thinking that they are ready for a change, many seniors do not realize the unusual effects that homesickness brings. 

Some of them are predictable, some subjective, including hatred towards your new whereabouts, constant melancholy and anguish. In more severe consequences home sickness can contribute to worsening mental state and depression. 

However, feelings, while they matter, don’t need to determine strengths and experiences. 

Therefore, homesickness can be battled, creating a worthy experience for yourself, without the need to completely abandon your memories. After overcoming this feeling once, I want to introduce some methods that in my experience helped me the most. 

• Carry on the physical proof of your memories. 

A simple photo, card, or gift to remind you of home. This, however, is rather a nostalgic soft emotion, being caused when you’re reminded of the positives – not an overwhelming need to return. Carrying on the object of your past life could help you with having something familiar in the unusual environment. 

• Get involved. 

As anxious as it can be for some to get to know new people, support groups are extremely important in one’s emotional regulation and self-worth. Therefore, getting involved in sports, clubs, or study groups could be beneficial when drastic change like moving happens. You don’t need a dozen new friends, however, a person you’d be able to trust may change your experience. Being more involved would lead to having less time for endless nostalgia and would give you support that could be crucial in complicated times. 

• Acknowledge your emotions and don’t bottle up the feelings 

Rejecting when feeling homesick is one of the most common, though damaging parts of emotional regulation. When acknowledging the feeling and giving it a name, you allow yourself to validate your emotions and treat yourself with kindness. Allowing yourself to be homesick would bring a gradual experience. Rather than bottling up emotions and letting them explode, acknowledgement and validation would allow homesickness to come in a natural flow. 

Homesickness is a feeling, henceforth, it’s subjective. I don’t guarantee that this advice would work for everyone, since everyone experiences things differently. But information is key, and while some can work, some may stay in vain. Unfortunately, there’s no magical cure for such emotion. You convey it through life, until you find a place – or people – that can become your new home. But homesickness is not a curse. It’ll help you to value what you have and will teach you to value things you experience. In the end, there’s much more to life than our past. And focusing on it, as much as focusing on the future, would make you miss the present.