Diary Prompt #2: The Ache Of Missing A City — The Immigrant’s Silent Grief
Missing a place you can’t return to and finding "home" again
Dear diary readers!
Lately, I’ve been caught between feeling restless, stuck, and grateful in a city I’ve lived in for almost eight years. Writing this felt like a way to make sense of that ache and remind myself that home isn’t always a place we’re born into, but something we can find and if we are lucky enough create ourselves. I’m sharing this in the hope that maybe some of you feel the same?
Have you ever missed a city so deeply it made you cry — not softly, but with a pain that claws at your insides like a parasite? A heartbreak so brutal, it might be worse than love lost. Like a tree: rooted, limbless, still. Trapped. Your soul slowly rots away, and your mind is never fully present. Days go by. Weeks. Many years. And you’re still just trying to remember how to reach the feeling of “home.” Because home was never something naturally given to you — in fact, it was taken away at the age of four. And yet, you still remember everything: your dog, your friends, the little pathway behind your house covered in raspberries, the chickens, your room, your family, the cherry tree.
Everything that has been left behind.
The land of grains and endless fields of sunflowers by the Black Sea.
All for the promise of a better life. Isn’t that everyone’s immigrant tale?
Tonight, I’m not where I want to be. Not where I want to grow old, make plans, or meet strangers in the streets of this pathetic city — a place everyone seems to adore, except me. Which makes me an outsider to some extend because I can’t relate to the feeling of loving this.
One day your patience will reward you, I wrote not long ago. But tonight, my patience runs thin. It feels like I need a firm roadmap — with deadlines, timelines, certainties. When will I finally be able to move — again? It’ll probably be my last move, too. When? When!? Just to feel at home. Just to feel like myself again. I’m aware of the steps needed, and they’re asking for my composure (just another word for patience).
I’ve spent eight years in a city I despise, and 32 years in a country that isn’t my birthplace. I’ve moved 16 times in my life.
This city that’s worn me down, even harmed my health. But here’s the silver lining: it forced lessons on me I never asked for, building my character the hardest way. This city punched me in the face and threw me to the ground. Was it necessary? I don’t know. But I like to believe it prepared me for something beyond my imagination. And for that, I am thankful. Truly.
When the spiral begins, I try to reroute it — turn frustration into gratitude:
We were lucky — not forced to flee, not chased by war. But had we stayed, as current and ongoing events prove, we would have lived through the invasion. It's a strange feeling. Heartbreaking. I don’t know if I deserve to be safe — and yet I understand the immense privilege of being able to live in peace.
I’ve been bullied and faced Antislavism, but not racism. I’m blonde, white, healthy. Privileged by the sheer accident of birth. Just because. These are advantages many people wish for. This might be the worst possible time to put this out into the universe — given everything happening in the world right now. Or maybe it’s exactly because of all that, that I feel this way: reflective. Nostalgic.
It makes me feel ashamed. It makes me feel ashamed to even have the privilege of choosing to move. I remind myself I’m lucky — I need be more thankful, I think, trying to halt the spiral, even as the weight of feeling stuck presses in.
Home is a feeling — to be found, claimed, and earned. I believe I’ve found mine. A chosen one. Not stumbled upon, but built. Built on patience. Held with composure. And with the painful awareness that I may never return to my real home. Not truly. Not ever again.
It’ll probably be my last move, too.
With love from my window seat,
Lena
PS: Free Palestine. Free Sudan. Free Congo. Free Yemen. Free Iran. Free Ukraine, my home forever — Слава Україні!
