HOMESICK HEARTS

Ye can certainly miss home when you're far far away but sometimes homesickness isn’t for a place at all.

It’s for the sound of the back door opening. For voices that used to fill the kitchen. For ordinary aul Tuesdays that nobody knew would become memories.

It’s missing the version of home where everybody was still there... ❤️

Missing younger you, before life started shedding its layers, before time started moving too fast, before comfort became something ye had to recreate for yourself.

Ye can stand in the very same house ye grew up in and still feel so homesick. Homesick for aul routines, old smells, the laughs and aul yarns, old (& odd) wee ways of going on.

Homesick for the feeling of safety that lived in small things, like the particular way a kettle boiled, the tv blaring, the deep fat fryer bogging out the kitchen, the ridiculous screaming matches to come for yer dinner, the "good" room ye daren't have went near, the 40 million local newspapers being raked through.

And sure ye know, that’s likely why we cling to familiar things. The mugs. The sayings.The dinners. The wee bits and pieces that remind us of who we are and where we came from.

It's not because we can’t really move on or forward, but because carrying home with us helps soften the ache of how much has changed.

Some hearts are just homesick hearts and there's bog all wrong with that.