How To Describe the Feeling Of A Homecoming

[ShadeZ]

How would you explain that feeling of home likeness?

 

[K.S. Crooks]

As a positive: Being able to completely relax and turn off your busy mind, a weight being lifted, feeling like you can fully breath, like floating in a calm pool of water, being accepted and loved for who you are, being at peace.
As a negative: high anxiety and trepidation, being judge for every decision you have made, not being accepted for who you are, love is conditional if given.

 

[Nirak]

Hmmm - your title says "How to describe the feeling of a homecoming" but your text says something different. Assuming that the title is right, a homecoming would depend on the character and the circumstances. What is the character's home like, and what was their experience there? Someone returning to a beloved home after a harrowing experience overseas would be different from someone returning to their hometown to face the demons of something terrible that happened there. Personality plays a part too - a quaint, small town might be a relaxing, friendly place to one person; but to another might be a stifling, backwards backwater. Who is there? Do they have no family left, or a bevy of loving relatives? Their ex-spouse, or their old flame? Also, has their home changed? Is the quaint small town they remembered now a soulless suburb; or a rundown, dying ghost town?

 

[Maker of Things Not Kings]

The ones that stick most in my mind in life were bittersweet. Returning somewhere you once lived, or were born, after many years away and finding so much has changed. That the stores, streets, people etc are all strange to you. It can see like no time has passed and there is a joy in the act of "going home" but inevitably, our memories of it as it was are often not what we return to.

 

[skip.knox]

Shadez, how would *you* explain it?

 

[ShadeZ]

Not sure that's why I ask lol. The best I can think of is an extreme sense of nostalgia.

 

[skip.knox]

I'm still puzzled. The OP refers to home likeness. Did you mean to say homesickness? That's different from homecoming. Or from a Homecoming, but that may be peculiarly American. When you mention nostalgia, though, it makes me think you mean homesickness.

So my question still stands. Have you never been away from home? Have you never felt homesickness? That's fine if you haven't, I'm just asking.

There's another important question that is crucial here: who is feeling this? What is the character and what is their circumstance? Emotions are not felt the same way by everyone in all conditions. The context is vitally important.

 

[ShadeZ]

A dragon slayer. Yes, I have been homesick many times before. I also have the experience of somewhere I once considered home no longer feeling that way due to a betrayal. The character I'm speaking of is a dragon slayer. He travels the world slaying monsters, dragons, and men alike that are terrorizing harmless villagers or are hunting him. He often thinks of his home which is the home of all his species a castle in the side of a mountain where a legendary dragon lair once was. He often mentions missing the feeling of being somewhere he doesn't have to watch his back and recounts tales of sitting by the hearth reading a book, hunting wild game with his siblings, and sparing with various other dragon slayers all family to him.

 

[skip.knox]

OK, so it's homesickness and you know the feeling, so I'm now really at a loss as to what you're asking. Have you described it but are unhappy with your descriptions?

I ought to say up front that I'm no help at all, as I've never been homesick. I moved a lot as a child (26 different schools) and home has always been wherever I happen to be at the time. But that's RL and we're talking fiction. So, what descriptions have you got down on paper so far?

 

[Nighty_Knight]

I’ll add from some personal experience. After coming back from combat tours a few times, it is a strange feeling. You feel like you have been gone for years, and feels like things have changed while you were away. Even though every case was only 7 months or so and most people don’t notice changes in that time. Often very little changes, but you have so much everything feels different.

 

[skip.knox]

>After coming back from combat tours a few times, it is a strange feeling.
Back in the World, Curtis Mayfield. One of my all-time favorites.