Dear Rice I am always watching you and have seen you suffering but have also witnessed your ability to laugh at yourself and your situations. There is not one situation that you haven’t eventually giggled at, so I think it is high time that you start chuckling at your homesickness. Remember those endless nights where someone would knock on your door, but you feared that if you opened it your tears would gush out and drown them? So you remained inside because you could not handle a charge of murder on top of your homesickness death sentence. They were there to pull you out of your jail cell but instead you opened photo albums and poured over them as tears poured down your already red and irritated cheeks. Curling up in a foetal position, you would fall asleep sucking your thumb like a child! Post-depression-session would find you smacking base on your face, something that you never do, just to cover up bags, which were so big that they could carry your school books! Such a waste of money and no wonder you always felt uncomfortable in your skin! I know that you are not alone and I understand that homesickness isn’t something to scoff at. Homesickness is a vicious feeling that keeps you up at night and confines you to your bed in the morning. It is also something that takes many of us by surprise because although it is talked about in that very “helpful” guide to surviving university, it is still a very personal, isolating issue that many students suffer from in silence. You have always been someone who adapts easily to new situations and living close by in Port Elizabeth and having moved away to Pretoria for a year at the tender age of 16, meant that you could handle the separation. I know you hate clichéd bits of advice but change is exactly that, change, and it is usually followed by harsh phrases such as “suck it up” and “get over it!” So next time, please open that door because I am quite sure that whoever is on the other end won’t mind swimming in your tears because more likely than not they will one day ask you to go swimming in theirs. Yours in laughter! Raisa
