Constantly feeling like I want to go home (but I don't know where home is)

a reply to: DeadSeraph

Same here. I don't fit in Because I care too much and have too much empathy. Maybe we are the beginning of a conscious awakening of some sort and there will be more like us in the future until we are the majority. Or maybe its always been this way with a minority of us who cannot understand how the world could be this way, with so many people concerned with only themselves, and maybe it will always be this way.

a reply to: DeadSeraph

"Don't it make you feel bad
When you're tryin' to find your way home
You don't know which way to go?
"


You are not alone Seraph, some good advice here about getting out into the wilderness and away from the negativity of daily life as it is. Maybe the home you yearn for isn't even on the planet. I have always had a disconnected feeling from my home and fellow man and one night while camping I was gazing skyward and I felt overwhelmingly that the home I couldn't reach was far far away. Strangely this gave me some comfort. To this day looking at the stars makes me feel connected to a 'home' but also very lonesome for it, but that's just me and my own craziness.

On a more practical note, my best friend Marc went on a trip to New Zealand many years ago (from Ireland) He came back and told me that the instant he alighted from the plane and stood on the ground he was overwhelmed by a powerful feeling of being 'Home', he had never been to or had any connection with NZ but he couldn't shake it from that moment. He was very happy in his life but that feeling gnawed away at him and eventually with huge effort and cost he obtained citizenship and packed up his life and moved there without knowing a soul in the whole country, where he lives contentedly to this day.

So maybe its a past life thing or something deeper that roots us to a place but don't despair I bet ATS is stuffed with people who feel as you do. Stay strong and things will unfold for you in their own time you are still young.
I wish you well.

originally posted by: DeadSeraph
a reply to: dezertdog

Wow. Sounds like you are having a challenging time in your life. I hope things improve for you soon!

After hearing everyone else's problems...

OP's don't seem that bad.

Hang in there.

originally posted by: whyamIhere

originally posted by: DeadSeraph
a reply to: dezertdog

Wow. Sounds like you are having a challenging time in your life. I hope things improve for you soon!

After hearing everyone else's problems...

OP's don't seem that bad.

Hang in there.

I hope I don't come across as seeking sympathy. Not my intention. I am fully aware that there are many people out there who have it much worse than I do.

I don't live in a warzone, I haven't lost any family members to bombs, and I live in a stable country. I currently have a roof over my head. I'm grateful for all of those things.

I'm just tired of feeling homesick, I guess. I wish I knew where home is? If that makes sense?

a reply to: DeadSeraph

I understand you were just stating where you were at in life.

Quickly, others seemed to come along that are in real trouble.

Sometimes I take for granted the blessings in my life. It's kind of nice to be reminded.

If we all threw our problems into a pile...I think we would all quickly grab our own back.

a reply to: DeadSeraph

DeadSeraph,

How one feels about life, and what is happening in it, is not dependant on how much worse other people have it. You have to give yourself permission to feel your feelings, and it is not necessary or for that matter, healthy to try to justify those feelings. They are what they are, and if you are feeling like you are missing something, or somewhere, then that is something that you have to confront at your own pace, and in your own way.

I would hope that the sentiment that I will express next, is shared by everyone in this thread...

We are all members here, and with that in mind, I want you to know that I have your back. If you ever need to talk, or vent, or anything like that, hit my inbox with it.

My homeless days were some of finest times I ever experienced. Living in a car, traveling and working odd jobs from deck hand to movie extra, meeting and making new friends, Wonderful romances, being a 20th century gypsy, young and free!

Now that I have found a beautiful home/acreage with a mortgage, businesses, animals, responsibilities, ex wives, BS materialist culture....

There isn't a moment that goes by that I don't yearn for the open road and the adventures it affords.

a reply to: DeadSeraph

I recently moved from FL to TX. Even before this move, I would find myself absent-minded thinking to myself or even muttering out loud "Man, I really need to get/go home." I even did it just the other night. I grew up in a crappy little closed minded town in Vermont. I didn't like it there, I'm not particularly close or interested in my family and living there is tough so when I'm thinking "home" that's not the place I'm thinking of. In fact, I have no idea where home is but I have that same desire to get home that you've described. Like you I am my family's black sheep and same as you was the oddball out of those who who didn't fit in elsewhere.


Interesting . . .

I'm so homesick.


That said. You take you with you wherever you go.

Constantly feeling like I want to go home (but I don't know where home is)

Makes me think of Liverpool, dunno why though. Nope, I forgot.

a reply to: DeadSeraph

I've had that feeling of being home sick, but not being able to work out where home was since I was 16. I was surrounded by friends and family then to, had a nice girlfriend and was still living in the place I was born and raised in. Yeah, depression probably has something to do with it, but its probably more about being a very complex individual, living in a shallow and simplistic society. Our maybe I'm being way to egotistic, lol.

Anyway, I'm basically in the same position now as you describe. Just turned 32 and living in a town with no friends or family. I really don't have any real desire to have friends either, I mean, I love people as a whole. But people as individuals just kind of bore me.

Spent about 5 years just travelling around my country, it really does help you get in touch with a more spiritual existence. Not in some feeble religious way either, but more in a way where you can feel a connection to the world around you.

Seriously, if you want my advice. Watch that movie 'Into the Wild' for inspiration, then buy a tent, sleeping bag and a gas cooker, then just drive. Roll down those long country roads, listening to some Eddie Vedder and spend some time sleeping under that big open sky.



Peace

I've always wanted to take just a wad of money and go road trippin'. My destination determined solely by the next tiny town with an odd name. I want to get a vacation album comprised of my picture with the city signs of these places and just wander until time and circumstances force me to come back ...

a reply to: ketsuko

You don't need money, just a reliable car that keeps turning over. Pick up a little work whenever you can for fuel and some food.

Your lucky as if you live in the US, there's like an awesome iconic song for just about every town or city you pass though.

DeadSeraph,

I empathize. I can relate. Absolutely.

I have had this feeling since I was a child - as long as I can remember. I would sit up in bed by the window and look out at the night sky at the stars, and feel homesick. I lived in the same house from age three to 20 -- so there was no “missing home” needed. I had a decent family - some dysfunction, but hey, who doesn’t?

I had stability, siblings, neighbors to play with, a mom and dad, health, school, plenty of food and the necessities of life without worry.

Yet I felt like there was a family of people out there, up where the stars were, that I was missing. Like I got dropped off on the planet and was left behind for some reason. My longing was palpable. I told no one.

As I got older, I often thought in my mind, “what is wrong with people here?“ when faced with the sickness and sadness and cruelty of humankind. “They” seemed so foreign to me. So backward. So primitive and barbaric that it physically and psychically seemed to hurt my very being. I really wanted to go Home. I felt that being Human was something sacred and beautiful, yet the “humans” around me seemed strange and not right.

Later, when I “grew up” -- when I traveled, I didn’t really miss my “home” -- as I love traveling. But I missed my “Home” with a capital H. No matter how interesting, fun, or entertaining life was or how routine it was.

I went to Ireland as a young woman. And I felt like I was home. Not big H, but “home.” I knew it so well -- all was familiar and wonderful to me. I never got lost, I knew my way around. I assumed it was “past life” that made this so. I wish I could have spent my life there -- guess I was afraid to leave my family for good and uproot my child. When I return there, I feel so full of joy, as I am home.

As I’ve gotten older and had great losses in my life, I found myself crying, sobbing, or almost howling in emotional pain. And I found myself saying out loud to myself, “where are my people? I want to find my people.” In those times, it was my “family” that I didn’t meet in this life/incarnation that I missed so deeply. For somehow, I knew they could comfort me.

Like you mentioned, I have always been different. Quiet. Introspective. (But I can be Chatty Kathy too!). I see life as art and poetry, as symphony and prose, sculpture and dance. All sacred.

Just as you said…I don’t do well in crowded places, am generally a loner as I don’t relate to others all that well (at least, not to those who are sort of unaware, asleep, wrapped up “in the world”), and I sometimes have trouble making new friends (but then again, there are those I meet and feel I’ve known forever and we are instantly close). My dearest friends too have moved away to pursue their careers.

Like you, I do care about people, especially children, and particularly those who are struggling physically, financially, emotionally, and so forth. I have to be careful of my empathy, as it can delete my energy. I learned a long time ago that walking down a crowded city street can wipe me out energetically if I’m not careful, as I feel the emotions of others.

However, I rarely feel “lonely.” I enjoy the silence of being in nature. Or sitting in the backyard listening to birds and sky gazing. I walk in the woods a lot to stay grounded. I read, write, or just think or “not think” outdoors. I love the sea and the mountains (who doesn’t!), but just give me some trees, birds, dirt, grass and maybe a creek and I’m good. In fact, despite my longing for “Home” -- I also am totally in love with the planet and being alive/3D. It’s civilization/society that I don’t get.

So, how can I love living and being on Earth, yet miss Home in the stars and a “family” I don’t exactly remember? Strange.

I’m not a religious person, though I believe there is much more to us than meat suits, so it’s not like I think Home is “heaven.”

I sometimes wonder if maybe it’s a different “time” on Earth that I am hungering for, a “when” perhaps.

Anyway, you are not alone in your longing.

PM me if you ever feel alone and need to share.

a reply to: DeadSeraph

I think you should talk to a professional. They help people figure things out for themselves. Even if you're opposed to it, perhaps give it a try.

I wish you the best. I think I know a sliver of what you're feeling (and it may be small but stings), and I think that we each find "home" for ourselves. There's no universal definition of home in my opinion, we all make or find our own.

This topic came up a few years ago. Should be easy to find. I had the same experience as a teenager.. I'd blurt out that I wanted to go home, while sitting on my bed.

Edit to add: I was convinced I was another entity looking out of my eyes like windows (and this was wayyyy before Dr. Who did it! I'd be on a trip in our station wagon (n00bs, think minivan) and look out the window knowing that wasn't me looking out of them. Yes I was a troubled in

Maybe it's simply that we're all old souls and we feel keenly that our time here is about up. I'm not talking that we're about to go off ourselves, only that we sense our rounds of being are about up because we've about learned what it is we're supposed to learn which is why we don't fit in and others feel so alien to us.

Fernweh. the feeling of being homesick for a place you've never been.

I had that.. still do. My home is not where I live, or was raised. it was somewhere else for a time. but as she changed and withdrew, my home went with her, so I am now lost.

but my home is not this country. one day I will find it, maybe just as I lay myself down to rest for the last time, who knows. I hope I do find it. the feeling of being stuck somewhere that is not home, causes so much turmoil inside of me.

to think, I can still imagine where I did call home... the imagined smell of the air, the sounds, the difference in everything from where I am.

to have lost it before I ever knew it, is gut wrenching.. :/

a reply to: DeadSeraph


I think I know exactly what you're talking about. Your description of how you (didn't) fit in felt like you were reading my own feelings of growing up. To be honest with you, I think none of those people who did 'fit in' really did anyway. They were faking it just as much as we tried to... each person in a group is unique, they just stay within the group for security.

I don't literally want to go home of course, being a grown man, home is wherever I make it; and my father/stepmom home... well I didn't feel welcome there since I was about 16...

But sometimes I feel like I want to go "home' and when I think of "home", I think of the dirt road out in the sticks where I grew up. But it's not just "HOME" that I'm wishing for; it's the way things used to be. The way LIFE used to be!! The 80's, phones with cords, kids playing in the dirt road, people not texting/smartphone-ing everywhere. Humans who TALK to each other. I feel like that "home" doesn't exist anymore :-(

I'm only a few years into my 30'S and the world has honestly changed in a lot of ways mostly for the worse since I was about 15. I don't mean to be THAT negative guy; I genuinely do try to maintain a positive outlook in life, but the past few years, maybe even 10 years... I have realized that all these material things we long for, and all this electronic non-sense in our lives has really de-humanized us in many ways.

For all the "convenience" that many of these things offer us, really most things since the dawn of the 'digital' age have actually become DISTRACTIONS to what really matters rather than things that ENHANCE our lives. Electricity, cars, modern appliances etc. those were mostly things that allowed humans to still conduct HUMAN activities, just with more ease, or faster. Today I feel much of the new technology and 'social' opportunities are in actuality ANTI-SOCIAL and are destroying us faster than we can try to fix it.


I do have one solution for you though. I did this myself and it made a HUGE difference. Get outdoors. Even in urban settings, but try to get surrounded by green at least once a week.

What I did was I started mountain biking (yea, there's no mountains in FL). But there are some really great trails to ride around here, and just being out in the woods (I like the really woodsy trails best) with your mind to yourself for a while, no social expectations, sweating off some calories, jumping stuff, grunting like a MAN, lol, It's good for you. Just the exercise alone is good for your mind, but I LOATHE treadmills, or spending more than 20minutes in a gym at all.


I have lots of stress lately with my own business and a new child, so I haven't been biking nearly as much and I can feel the anxiety down feeling creeping again. Time to get back out in the woods a couple times a week!

I relate to how you feel. I think it's very difficult (which sometimes translates to depressing) to be full of empathy for others and live in a world devoid of empathy.

As a suggestion you may want to consider a job, that of course is something you enjoy doing, but that also calls for empathy and compassion for people/animals as that will lift your spirits and you will meet people like yourself. Another suggestion is to avoid those who aren't like-minded, especially if they are low on the empathy scale, or worse devoid of emotions altogether -- even if they are family. They will drag you down and make it hard for you to lift yourself up.

Based upon your self-assessment maybe surrounding yourself with like-minded, genuine people who are also high up on the empathy scale would be helpful... and to only have limited, minimal contact with all others or avoid them altogether. Over time, a small, close, tight-knit group of friends will gradually form, people whom are trustworthy and whom you can depend upon when needed. Be aware and careful as some people will purposely pretend to be what they think you want them to be and are actually superficial -- exactly what you don't need.

Don't be hard on yourself, start slowly, be patient, changes won't happen overnight. Stay with it until you get what you want. It could take many months or even a year or more. By associating with these types of people you'll naturally attract more of them. You'll be amazed at how different you will feel. Your whole outlook will change. You'll feel less anxious, more at ease, more at home, because the people closest to you in your life are most like yourself.