Echoes of home
Echoes of Home
By Divyam Goel
Some nights, I yearn to return home. To simply stand up, gather all that truly matters - those precious pieces of my soul rather than the trinkets we mortals cling to under the guise of shallow utility - and pack them into the same suitcases I once lugged across oceans. To purchase a ticket and fly back into the arms of familiarity. Home - steady, unchanging, and possessed of a stability that now seems lost amid my frantic and sometimes foolish pursuits of childhood promises. A treasure our modern youth, battered by unrelenting pressures, has all but forfeited to the corrosive illusions of so-called progress. Stability: the shining quality I once believed would cradle me through life but now finds itself buried under the weight of societal grandeur and half-baked notions of advancement.
But is home truly that peaceful place I remember, or have I enshrined a myth of my own creation? Perhaps I have forged an echo chamber in which I preserve the childhood version of home, refusing to concede to time’s inexorable march. Does that idyllic notion still exist, or am I grasping at a thread that dangles untethered, poised to slip through my fingers? In my fervor to chase what I hoped were (and maybe still are) my dreams, have I left behind the only path to a genuinely fulfilling life - one filled with those I used to call my own, who knew me like their own reflections and for whom my happiness was paramount? Family and friends, my clan, the very pillars that defined my world. Have I truly traded them for the rootless existence of a nomad?
Every so often, this thought returns like a swift, merciless tide. It comes crashing down, reminding me that I’m fighting my battles alone. No support system to fall back on, no close-knit circle to catch me if I stumble, no partner or confidants to share my most fragile self with. This is not a figment of my imagination; it’s the cold, jagged reality of the path I chose. It’s the dark underside of pursuing passions kindled within the safe confines of those four walls I called home, nurtured by people whose love was as constant as the sunrise. And indeed, it’s an ugly truth rarely spoken, partly because times have changed, and partly because so few dedicate their lives to research or academic rigor. To be an outlier is both a distinction and a burden - a truth sinking deeper into my bones as the call to return home grows louder, more urgent, more impossible to ignore.
Most days, I find something - anything - to distract me. Last semester, it was late nights at bars, the numbing haze of alcohol, and the release of dancing every other weekend. And of course, there was always the avalanche of academic work. But the pressures are escalating: everywhere I turn, I’m faced with peers who are simultaneously colleagues and competitors. The solace that once sprang from a simple chat with my dad, or the warmth of my mother’s lap, is painfully absent here. I saw my father recently, face-to-face, which felt like a feast after famine - what I wouldn’t give to experience that closeness every day. The heart of our conversation encapsulated precisely what haunts me: the irreplaceable nature of genuine human contact. I miss leaning on my father’s shoulder, feeling its solid assurance beneath me, or resting my head in my mother’s lap when life felt unbearably heavy. Even then, I would eventually chart my own solutions, but the physical awareness of their presence, the instantaneous comfort of sharing my emotional world, meant everything. And now, I cannot help but ask myself, over and over again: What have I done?
