The girl who missed home

It was my decision to join a new school away from home and this particular school was familiar to me since my brother was already enrolled there.

For as long as I can remember, I wanted to be there. What I did not anticipate was the brutal change of moving from home. I was not prepared for it.

Most of you who knew me then might remember me as the homesick, stubborn, awkward, weird kid. I have never embraced that side of me, as I write this I want to explore more of what I felt then and make peace with it.

I had a set routine. Wake up at 7 am. Have breakfast, be dropped off at school. Get picked up at 4 pm. Watch my beloved cartoons till 6 pm, pray do my homework, watch cartoons again, eat dinner and sleep around 9 or 9:30 pm. This changed to waking up at 5 am and sleeping at 10:30 pm at my new school.

I was not accustomed to feeling lonely and confused when everything was set out for me, when I had a home full of people who loved and cared for me. I was far from prepared for such a drastic change. I held out for a few days and I couldn't fully process these feelings that I had never experienced before.

I was excited about my new school uniform, vanity box full of cute hair clips, my huge grey trunk, my new outfit for the first day of 5th grade.

I remember how my mother kissed me on my cheek and hurried away before I could see her cry. I felt a little hollow watching her walk away, a hollowness I couldn't explain to myself and it build up over the next few days with the new time table and routine and classmates who already knew each other. And after three days, during 5 am morning prayer, I broke down sobbing as I started uttering the words Our Father.

I knew I was homesick; missing my parents, Shibu chettan , Arya chechi, Lala, Divakaran chettan, my cartoons. People at home. I missed the familiarity that I was cocooned in for as long as I can remember and I seeked some semblance of home/family with my brother who was in 12th grade then. The friends I made never seemed to stay, my teachers kept changing, the uncertainty only fueled the loneliness and confusion that I was trying to deal with then. My internal battle with homesickness continued well into 7th grade.

I felt like I was not fitting in, but at the same time I so badly wanted to. Maybe I tried in all the wrong ways, but it took me quite a while to settle in at school. That being said, the school was accommodating in a lot of ways with my homesickness and for that I am always grateful.

I never wanted anyone else to have the same experience as I did, where they feel like they don't belong or feel alone.

As I grew into being one of the old timers, I tried to make my peers feel at ease if I sensed they were feeling alone, I am not sure how much I succeeded or failed in that endeavour, especially when I got caught up with my own thing at school.

I have been embarrassed about that little girl who cried and acted out and I don't want to be. I am trying to understand her, work through all her confusion and try to make sense of the emotions she denied herself in fear of feeling weak.

I am still quiet and awkward and weird, I still freeze in new social situations - that has not changed much.

But I can say with absolute certainty that I have never regretted my decision of joining Labour India. Where else would I have met these wonderful people?