Homesick at Home: Complex Emotions in a World Turned Upside Down
The primary word I keep saying and thinking about this situation is “surreal.” Like a Dalí painting, things feel strange and hard to believe, as if at any moment I will simply wake up.
As I explore the ups-and-downs of my emotions—as if I’m on the world’s slowest, weirdest roller-coaster—it occurs to me that what I really mean is “uncanny.” Freud named the feeling of unheimliche to describe the sensation of strangeness within what should be ordinary.
Surely, as I do my job each day, but from an upstairs room in my house rather than from my somewhat shabby office or my beautiful, bustling campus, I feel uncanny. As I strategically time trips to get groceries, shying away from my fellow shoppers, or pick up phone-ordered books from a bookshop, where the clerk furtively sets down and steps away from a wrapped package, I feel uncanny. These should be, recently were, ordinary things to do but now they feel weird, alien, strange. In a word, uncanny.
But there’s another emotion as well, one that, like uncanny, takes a less common term that anger, fear, sadness, or joy. As I walk around my neighborhood and local trails, I cross the street or pull aside so people can pass at six or more feet of distance. I find myself annoyed when others don’t heed this guidance and then annoyed that I’m annoyed and also saddened by this suspicion I feel of my neighbors and the invisible menace they may or may not carry on their persons, that I may carry on mine. I am trying to make myself smile, say hello, nod. It matters to remember and acknowledge our human connection within this strangeness. But it remains alienating.
We are all in this together. Apart.
The other emotion I realize I’m feeling is “solastalgia.” Coined by Glenn A. Albrecht, solastalgia refers to the feelings of loss, anxiety, sadness, and fear that come from changes to your home environment. It tends to be applied to environmental issues, whether the violence of pit mining, the degradation of neighborhoods from gentrification, or changes wrought—quickly or slow—by global warming. And surely the emotions and causes and remedies and complexities of the climate crisis and environmental injustice and the COVID-19 pandemic overlap.
Solastalgia has been summarized as “the homesickness you feel at home.” While I spend most of my days and hours contained within my house, I feel homesick for the warp and weft that makes up my life, that structures my concept of home. I miss my friends. I miss popping down to the pub for a pint. miss the camaraderie of the hiking trails. I miss my house feeling like a refuge rather than a box. I miss inviting people over. I miss walking across campus to meet and collaborate with colleagues. I miss browsing bookshops. I miss riding my bike around town. I miss coffee shops. I miss…
