Where The Heart Is: Home

As I got off the GO train at Union Station this morning in Toronto, I was struck with a strange sense of homesickness. I was homesick for Toronto, in Toronto. Does that make any sense? At all? Anyone?

I think the reality of my move to Kingston truly hit me yesterday afternoon when I started packing. I methodically set aside winter clothing, important books from my bookshelf, old notebooks from classes in undergad, school supplies, picture frames, and other items to the point where parts of my room (really, my bookshelf) looked relatively empty. Exciting, but obviously quite scary at the same time. Come September, everything I've known for most of my life will be miles away. Remnants of my life's previous phases will merely sit in photo frames and in old notebooks I'll be taking to Kingston.

And this morning, as I walked out of Union Station, with the reality of my move just three weeks away, that wave of homesickness made me realize how much I'll really and truly miss Toronto. Queen's is a beautiful campus, and I'm sure that Kingston will be an awesome city to live in. But I will, without a doubt, miss my morning GO train rides, the insanely busy Tim Hortons on Front Street and University Avenue, the hustle of Bay Street workers running to get to work on time, the bustle of city life, and the familiarity of a city I've attended school in and travelled to work to for the past five years.

I will miss Toronto and Mississauga very much. I didn't realize the potential to miss my awesome home cities would be so great, and yet here we are. I suppose leaving home for an extended period of time has such an effect on us, but I would like to convey how much I love these cities and how much I'll miss its familiarity and dependability when I'm gone.

Really, it isn't until we leave a person or place that we realize how much we've grown to care. Our affections grow with time, whether we're aware of it or not. And no matter where I go in this world of ours, whether I jet off to England or Boston or an unknown destination for law school next year, whether next year's EUROPTRIP 2011 to Barcelona and Madrid will transpire, whether I travel anywhere else for academic purposes (or otherwise), it's a great comfort knowing that I'll always have dear old Mississauga and Toronto to come home to.

And wherever any of us go in life, that's where your heart will always be. Cliche as it is, you'll always have it waiting for you when you desire to return. Home.

“Home is a name, a word, it is a strong one. Stronger than magicians ever spoke, or spirits ever answered to, in the strongest conjuration.”
- Charles Dickens