The Hardest Part Of Going Home For The Holidays That No One Talks About

While the holiday season is supposed to be a time of celebration and connection, this isn’t always the case. Because for some of us, heading home for the holidays after moving out is only a reminder of all the reasons we left in the first place.

After all, going home reminds us of the various ways we never really fit in with our families. Going home brings up old memories we’d prefer to forget and reopens old wounds we fought hard to heal. But mostly, going home gives us glimpses of who we once were, people we sometimes wish we never were at all.

And this is the hardest part of going home for the holidays that no one talks about: learning to bridge the gap between who we’ve been with who we are now. Because we aren’t the same people we were when we slept in our twin beds growing up. We’re different. We’re more mature. We’re more confident and self-assured.

But when we go home for the holidays, our family and friends often struggle to both reconcile and embrace this change because they remember those past versions of us, the versions of us that were more messy, unpredictable, and strange than we are today.

And because of this, those parts of us tend to rise back to the surface and we then begin to worry that maybe we haven’t grown as much as we thought. That maybe we’ll always be those sad and insecure and unsteady people we thought we left behind.

And it hurts. A lot.

While it can be extremely painful to go back home because of what it brings up within us, it is important to remember that we couldn’t be who were are now without being who we’ve been. And, in many ways, our past selves still live within us.

If we really let ourselves think about it, maybe we’re lucky that our family and friends can recall our former selves so easily. Because maybe they were more lovable than we give them credit for.