Just as you can never step twice in the same river, so you can never return home.

 

The word nostalgia, from the Greek Nostos - homecoming, and algos - pain, grief, distress, has come to mean a saccharine longing for the past, but the word in fact originally had a meaning specifically associated with the homecoming of seafaring men - specifically in literature with Odysseus's men and homecoming. Ten years fighting the Trojans, and ten years wandering as they tried to get back home would have certainly have invoked some home sickness, but the word did not refer to homesickness as such - it was about the pain of returning home, not longing to return home.

 

Actually the word is also related to the Sanskrit nasate, meaning "he approaches" - I am always utterly fascinated by the relationships between languages. I wish I had done Latin and Greek at school instead of useless bloody Australian Studies and English classes that made me want to commit hari kiri. But I digress.

 

Why is homecoming painful? Well, for some of the Greeks there were probably good reasons why it was painful. Agamemnon, for example, got an axe in the head. That's gotta hurt.

 

Mind you, he had killed his daughter before he left, spent twenty years away from home, and brough a Trojan hussy with him when he returned, which is enough to make any wife go for the axe, really (mind you, she hadn't exactly been faithful while he was away either).

 

Apart from possibly getting an axe to the head, why exactly would homecoming be painful? My guess is it's because home is never as you have imagined it. What you have been thinking on those long nights at sea (apart from "Where'd I put my boy butter?", or "Who's going to make me their bitch?") is not going to match up to the reality of home, which even if you were entirely realistic in your imaginings, has changed since you left anyway.

 

Perhaps this explains why I feel at the moment that I don't belong in my life. I can't get back home because the concept of home is transitory and where I want to be no longer exists.

 

Or perhaps it's just because someone stole my ruby slippers.