According to my roommate, I talk in my sleep. She doesn’t tell me what I say exactly, only that I mutter, babble, swear and sometimes introduce myself to invisible people. If that’s not weird enough, she says she sometimes wakes up in the middle of the night and hears me communing with ghosts. It creeps her out. I don’t blame her.
Recently, it occurred to me that I should be worried. I wondered if talking in my sleep was an early sign of madness or perhaps the subconscious expression of some repressed childhood desire. Or maybe I was possessed, Exorcist-style (this is Georgetown, you know). But since none of these possibilities seemed all that likely, I resolved to look for another explanation.
I began paying attention to how I sleep. I tried to train myself to wake at the slightest sound, hoping to catch myself in the act. And it worked … sort of. One morning I overheard myself calling my dog to come inside, apparently forgetting that he was in California and couldn’t possibly hear me. But since listening to my sleep-talking proved to be a pretty difficult endeavor, I decided to opt for an easier tactic. I began paying attention to how I wake up.
To my surprise, I discovered that I don’t wake up happy very often anymore. This change is quite a dramatic departure for me. Mornings have always been my best time, when the day is a blank canvas of unlimited potential and the light at the window is oh, so pretty. This vague sadness, this unnamable unease, was troubling. It was a certain hollowness in the gut where something solid and bright has gone missing. In high school I had always taken comfort in the knowledge that I could count on a cup of coffee waiting downstairs with the daily paper. And just then I finally realized what it was I was missing. I was homesick.
Homesickness is perfectly normal. Lots of people get homesick. Satisfied that I had hit upon the answer at last, I indulged in a few moments of nostalgia, yearning for a house 3,000 miles away and the people who inhabit it. “My family,” I thought, getting a warm, mushy feeling inside, like a stomach full of oatmeal. I longed for last summer, when I slept on my own bed, ate with my own silverware, and was, to be honest, a little bored.
Actually, I’d spent most of the summer wanting to get away from home. I’d missed college, missed the freedom of going out whenever I felt like it and missed my friends. I’d even missed the work, though it shamed me to admit it. Thinking back on it, I wasn’t even sure I’d liked being home all that much. So how could it be that now at school again, I wanted to go back?
A couple of weeks ago I went to see Garden State with my roommates. In one part, the main character-an apathetic Holden Caulfield-at-age-25-type-is talking to Natalie Portman’s character about the idea of home. He says, “You know that point in your life when you realize that the house that you grew up in isn’t really your home anymore? It just sort of happens one day, and it’s just gone. And you can never get it back. It’s like you get homesick for a place that doesn’t exist.” The last line stuck with me. As I sat there trying to untangle my inner psyche, I realized he was exactly right.
Over time, I’d lost my idea of home. I was homesick for a place I could never go back to again. It was pretty sad. The home I wanted was the home of my childhood. In this home, I would come back from school in the rain and drop my wet backpack next to the stairs. My mom would be waiting, and hot chocolate sat in an orange mug on the table. I would kick my shoes off and slide across the wooden floor in my socks, pretending to be a figure skater. But for this home, I realized, I was just too old.
I’m okay with getting older. Growing up is actually kind of fun, and it’s inevitable, so I might as well learn to like it. Besides, there’s one thing I’m sure of: I’ll always have that childhood with me, snuggled into the corner of my heart like a worn but much-loved teddy bear, reassuring me when I’m homesick for the place that doesn’t exist anymore. At least some part of me will never change.
