Being homesick was never a feeling that I struggled with. Maybe it’s because my parents have been separated since I was very young – a week at dad’s, a week at mom’s. Or maybe it is because I have always been a camp kid – two weeks at one camp, one week at another. Either way, to me, home was never a place, it was always people.

Until recently. 

Lately, I have found myself staring at my ceiling thinking about how all I want to do is to go home. I want to fall asleep feeling cold because I didn’t have the heart to take the blankets back from my dog who was snuggled up in them sleeping next to me. 

I want to walk in the door and have her greet me in the hall. 

I have never been good at goodbyes. I cry every time. 

Everyone I have connected with lives in my head, and I still think about them many years after our last conversation. 

I met my dog when I was five years old. I was wearing my winter hat that had strings with pompoms on the end and she was hanging off of it trying to eat them. I am twenty now and I had to say goodbye to her this past January. 

She was the sweetest girl.

She was my greatest friend. 

And I am homesick for a life with her in it. 

One of my favourite poems is “The Guest House” by Rumi. Rumi uses the guest house as a metaphor to portray that each day is an opportunity to experience something new in our lives, even if it’s unexpected. Our body (or our life) represents the guest house and our feelings represent the guests. The idea is that these guests (or feelings) will come and go. Rumi asks you to open yourself to these feelings (and people) when they arrive at the door and allow them to leave on their own accord. Just like guests, they are not supposed to stay forever.  

My dog was never supposed to stay forever. No matter how many times I said that she was. 

I knew that I would have to say goodbye. 

But I didn’t know how. She sat with me through every panic attack, through my first heartbreak, and the second one too. She is half the reason I survived the things that I did. 

I think she knew that too. 

I think that she knew how loved she was. 

I found peace in that and I hope she did too. 

Five-year-old me eagerly greeted her at my door and nineteen-year-old me let her leave on her own accord. 

And when I feel homesick for the people and places in my life, who I am either not with or who aren’t here anymore, I think about the feeling of homesickness and how it is just the feeling of love waiting for you to return and how beautiful that is. 

I am so grateful that I have opened my heart to so many people and so many things because no matter the number of times you are hurt, the moment you get to feel love like that - makes everything else worthwhile. 

And when my time comes, I will greet death at the door and he will stop in my hallway and admire all the pictures I have hung on my walls. He will ask me about the people in the photographs, and the places that I have been to, and he will be so enthralled that he will ask me for my life story. And after he is done listening and asking me questions, he will tell me that a life that’s been loved is a life that’s been lived. 

Illustrated by Sadie Levine