Month 1 - Homesickness

Here's a breakdown on the definition of homesickness for me. I've been here for a month.

 

Week 1.

So heartbreaking,

At everyturn, a wave of desperation taking over,

Realising that I am alone without the rocks that I have clung to in this crazy world for so long.

Lying in my apartment with different and unknown objects surrounding me,

Realising this time over again that if the tide began to pull,

I could not rely on those rocks to push me to the surface.

 

Absolutely gutt wrenching and physically turmoiling.

Emotionally desperate for familiarity.

 

 

Week 4.

Contacts been made tentatively.

Teachers with warm smiles and encouraging nods,

Gaijin with understanding encouragement and continual visits.

Finding beautiful wairua instilled within different people that are now surrounding me.

The creation of a suprisingly old relationship within new ans renewed friendships.

The forming of new rocks with whanau from the past. 

 

The realisation that this new place is not unknown, 

The familarities of human kindness and the mutual language of bodies and souls. 

Realising the rocks in my home have neither disappeared nor are unreachable.

 

Homesickness still lives on, but is now settled into a small pocket of my wairua - a constant yearning for my turangawaewae and whanaunga deposited deep within; instead of at every turn. 

 

Ko Patumahoe toku kainga,

engari;

E noho ana ahau i roto Nihon,

mo inaianei.

Ma te wa