hiraeth/ˈhirˌīTH/: longing for a home that never was

My first time coming across this word was in a book, where the author pointed out that there is a name for emotions that you feel that English words cannot fully capture or even begin to explain.

Hiraeth is a welsh word meaning a home sickness for a place you cannot return to, or a place that never existed. What a word.

The human experience is such a spiritual experience. To have the ability to long, want, yearn, thirst for something we don’t know or can’t quite put a name to. All we have is our feelings for that place, person or thing.

There have been points in my life where I have felt completely content and situated, like I was exactly where I needed to be in that moment. While some other times, I will find myself with a faraway look on my face, zoned out.

The times that I have felt hiraeth will be when I was a young girl in Lagos Nigeria finishing up high school and still living under the roof of my Igbo-Catholic somewhat strict and disciplined Nigerian Parents. I really did yearn to emancipate and go out on my own, and create a life that was free from their watchful, protective eyes. The longing was so deep that I thought choosing to move half way across the world to Vancouver Canada would be this solace or place I was seeking. I have since found a home in Canada, where I have met lots of amazing people and made soulmates in different bodies, however that longing for home has still not quite been filled. It was this realization that threw me into some sort of quarter life crisis because I didn’t feel that contentment here, and I would yearn for ‘home’, but my mind will immediately reject the idea of running back home to Nigeria to keep living in the safe, comfortable home of my parents. That really wasn’t the home sickness I was feeling. I felt stuck.

If not here, if not Lagos, then where?

Hiraeth, some of us are still searching for a place that our souls can call ‘home’, and maybe sometimes that is not a place but a person.