Vodka Yonic features a rotating cast of women, nonbinary and gender-diverse writers from around the world sharing stories that are alternately humorous, sobering, intellectual, erotic, religious or painfully personal. You never know what you’ll find in this column, but we hope this potent mix of stories encourages conversation.
Pangs of sadness, a sweet ache. For the first time in my life, I’m homesick.
I thought the feeling might hit me years ago when I left for college, but it never came.
My version of reality for 18 years was the dirt roads and hayfields of my home in Statesboro, a college town in southeast Georgia. Like many angst-filled teenagers, I yearned for something more. Something bigger.
When I moved three hours north to Athens, Ga., for college, I entered with wide eyes and a sense of opportunity. It felt as if I received a golden ticket allowing me to build a real community for myself. I never looked back.
I grew in and out of myself and became someone new altogether. I clung to that feeling of independence, of doing things on my own terms — so much so that I spent nearly two years post-graduation living in Athens, finding solace in the tight-knit music scene and the familiar faces I came to know.
In all that time, I never felt homesick. Sure, there were times I would look back fondly at the wide-open fields and sublime sunsets of my childhood, but never once did I question my decision to leave.
Six months ago, I left it all behind to move to Nashville. Coming here was a sort of fresh start for me. My life took a tumultuous turn in the back half of 2024, marked by the unexpected death of a co-worker and mentor almost immediately followed by the disintegration of a two-year relationship. I was engulfed in grief and an influx of emotions — ones I’m still sorting through — and I immediately began looking for a way out. In some ways, I was running from my problems. But as I looked around my home in Athens, I knew my time there had reached its expiration date. Instead of continuing to grow, things were becoming stale.
On a snowy Sunday in January, I packed nearly all my belongings into my car and began the five-hour drive to Nashville alone. As I crossed the Tennessee River and watched the icicles clinging to the mountains slowly melt away, I knew my life was changing forever. Leaving the comfort of everything I knew and the home I had meticulously constructed for myself was the boldest thing I had ever done.
Moving didn’t feel the same as it did when I was 18. It really didn’t feel like much of anything. I got a job offer and left 22 days later. My decisions moved faster than my mind, and I wasn’t sure how to process it. All I knew is that I was once again en route to something more, just like I had been six years prior.
When a few friends visited for my birthday in May, it all finally hit me. I hadn’t left Nashville since the move or seen any of the people who played such an integral part of my life over the past half-decade. We shared drinks and I snort-laughed until my face was red. I experienced a joy I hadn’t felt in quite some time. When they left on Sunday, my heart sank. I felt an anxious, pit-in-the-stomach feeling, reminiscing on what felt like a past life. That was it. I was homesick.
I’ve blossomed in new ways since coming to Nashville, and moving here pulled me out of one of the darkest periods of my life. But seeing my friends and getting a glimpse of what I left behind in Georgia gave me an overwhelming emotion of nostalgia and bittersweet longing.
I wasn’t quite sure what to do with the feeling, or if I was even supposed to do anything at all.
I ultimately decided to tackle it head on. I visited Athens in June in what I expected would feel like a grand return. I stayed at my old house, where empty nails still stood out on the wall where I’d once hung the art I quickly packed away in the move.
Being back in the town that harbored my most transformative years, I saw that everything was the same. The steep hills I used to hike up after a night out, the coffee shop where I sat when I felt I had nowhere else to go — it was all still standing. Life there was still moving. I was the one that had changed. It was so easy to feel as if the entire city had crumbled behind me when I left, but it didn’t. Countless versions of myself existed in Athens, and this time I stood there as an entirely new person. I was now the “friend from Nashville,” a quasi-stranger in my former home.
I began to wonder what it really means to be homesick. It doesn’t always mean you want to go back. Sometimes it’s realizing that leaving is the best decision you ever made.
