On my flight to San Francisco, thoughts of doubt and fear popped up in my head.
"This is crazy," I thought to myself. "I'm uprooting my life and leaving behind my family and everything I've known. What am I doing?!"
I'm starting to distinguish the difference between feeling at home and feeling like I'm where I'm supposed to be. Home is a place I'm familiar with and comfortable. Where I'm supposed to be can feel uncomfortable and vulnerable at first, but it feels right. When I started to see the Bay Area from the plane, I felt at ease. I'm meant to be here.
Homesickness didn't hit me until a week later. My first week in SF, I was on an adrenaline rush. I was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed - everything was so new and exciting. Steve arrived my first Friday to help us look for an apartment. Having him around made me realize how fun our west coast adventure will be. Then, seeing Steve leave when the weekend was over made me super homesick. I was sitting in front of my computer at the office when a wave of homesickness hit me like a ton of bricks. I missed my friends and family, my home, my neighborhood, the comfort of it all. My heart ached and I suddenly felt like sobbing.
I've felt these emotions before - when I visited Taiwan as a kid, when I studied abroad in Europe in high school, when I moved to Boston for college. Homesickness isn't a new emotion; it's just one that I think I've grown out of until it hits me by surprise. I know that this is the hardest part of any move and that eventually the homesickness will subside. After a while, San Francisco will feel like home. Taiwan, Europe, and Boston did.
“‘When you feel homesick,’ he said, ‘just look up. Because the moon is the same wherever you go.’”