Homesickness in My Hometown
By: N. Mozart Diaz
Everyone has that one class that just seems to understand what you’re going through, it wasn’t any surprise when that class was my Psych class in college. The instructor gave us something to read over the weekend to be discussed in the next meeting.
As I went through the readings and listened to discussion, it became clear to me that I was going through something similar to this — being Baguio-born and raised, it was something I never thought I would go through as I study in it. The first two weeks were a flurry of emotions and anxieties all ebbing and flowing and manifesting themselves in my mind and body. (Although my classmates are probably going through a much more extreme version of this, it is a completely new sensation nevertheless.) I began to see all the things around me move much quicker and wilder than it ever has. My bloc-mates already knew each other, there were inside jokes already being passed around; I didn’t know anyone, everything was new all too suddenly.
An entirely new world opened itself to me on August 3, 2015 and all of its contents fell on me like a heavy burden from nowhere. I stood there, in the middle of it all, barely processing the world I had just entered. I immediately had the urge to fit in somewhere, to be accepted by the people around me. I adjusted myself to them; I hid some parts I thought they might dislike. I did this for days. Eventually, I became tired and ran to old routines, old friends, and old places — as if some feeling of familiarity would ease my worries and anxieties. It didn’t. Old habits fell through, old schedules fell apart, old friends were in their own universities; I was at a loss — completely alone in the new world I found myself in.
I eventually did settle with my bloc-mates and found a few friends from other courses; they were great, terrific people — the sensation of making new friends is amazing, but there were still times when the whole shebang was an overwhelming loss of control: control over time, schedule, money, habits, and personal projects.
The old world began being romanticized, idealized, and changed into something it never was. It began to take shape in my mind as a place where I belonged, where I had a place in the order of things, something more than it really is. It became what was familiar and easy. As it took shape, my perception of this new world began to become a little negative. It represented chaos, uncertainty — a whirlwind of anxiety.
I grew up in a fairly secluded environment, its comings and goings were predictable and all the patterns were set. I would wake up at 5, get ready for school, catch the school service, get to school, attend class, eat lunch, talk to friends at dismissal, go home, and be free to do whatever I want to in the weekends. It didn’t help me that I attended the same school for my entire life — a Christian school, to make matters more difficult, everything they warned me about, the ideas, the culture, the people, it all came together in this campus. (I don’t mind, of course, I didn’t subscribe to all their preaching, all the diversity and new-ness of it is quite refreshing.) I got used to the same people, the same ideas, the same environment. I refuse to think that my teachers were right, that I would be completely culture shocked by UP, but I am — and it sucks to admit it.
However difficult it is to say, I do crave the familiarity of my old school, all the old places, the old classrooms, and the familiar faces within it. And as hard as it was to admit that to myself, it’s twice as hard to admit that I’m homesick in my own hometown; homesick not because I’m far away from my family, but homesick because I crave familiarity and the old order of things. But I can’t have that can I? I have to face this new world head on; it’s where I live in now. There is no backwards, only forwards. I just need to reorient myself over the things I can and cannot control in my life and to reorganize the things that I can control.
The class (Psych 10), without a doubt, normalized the sensations we were all going through. As I sat and listened through discussion and all the stories of new found friends, it all seemed to fit together — the sensation and the explanation. I look forward to more eye-opening lessons from the class, things that would make sense of the world, both new and old, and to show new perspectives I didn’t even know existed.
