First up, this is a personal story and thus what seems like nothing to you, will mean a big deal to me. Second of all, unless you've spent more than a month away from family, for whatever reasons, this may not have any effect on you, but I'm going to write about it anyway.
I haven't seen my family and friend, physically, since August 29th 2016. I am currently going through the visa process to be with my wife and two kids in the US, and so I am unable to go back to see them until it has been sorted out. This means I have not seen them round about 7, 7 and a half months, and that's the longest I've been away from them. I stayed in the US for 3 months in the Summer of '15, and as someone who has never left their home town for longer than 3 weeks before, that was hard for me to do. But as each day goes by, marking the longest I've spent away from them, it seems that the homesickness that I feel is getting harder and harder to cure. None more so than when I catch the weekly, or bi-weekly, Manchester United game on Fox Sports.
My brother and I have had a weird relationship ever since I outgrew him and I was no longer someone he could get in a headlock or push about. To be honest, we never had much of a relationship. He is 3 and a half years old than I am, and so when he hit his teenage years, he stopped being my brother and became a prick. Never stuck up for me when I was bullied by the local tough kids, only invited me with his friends to play football when they had an odd number. Shit like that.
When I hit 5'11 when I was 14/15, he kinda took a step back and that was roughly around the time we stopped playing football together and he "grew up", became more interested in other things. Was about the time we had our first big fight too, which led to my sister pushing him over into our co-joined room, and I bailed the house looking for our Mam, holding my head. You see, he was picking on our nephew, so I went to go tell my sister to make him stop as it was interrupting my reading time. He wouldn't let me go, so I pushed him and he pushed me down - at which point the house phone rang, I picked up and when I heard it was his girlfriend, I said "The prick isn't here", and hung up. That deserved a couple of blows to the head, according to him. So as I'm taking some punches to the crown, my nephew gets his mam and she comes to the rescue.
We never spoke properly after that for almost 10 years. We've never been the same, and the only thing I can say that I miss, which is the main subject of this post, is that every Saturday, Sunday, and - when United would play in Europe - the occasional Tuesday/Wednesday bonus game, we would sit down together, each with our beverage of choice, and cheer on our team.
We would both scream, applaud, laugh, groan, and throw our hands up in the air like a couple of Italians arguing over a loaf of bread, or an olive. I don't know. It was fun, but pretty much the only bonding we would do. Oh, we went on the occasional walk up a huge hill in the last few months I was in England.
Fuck, I miss him.
It's pretty tough, right now. Homesickness is kicking my butt, I'm missing the smaller things about England, and I purposely ignore my mam and friend because I know I'm going to get attached to our conversation. I'm sat here, typing away, drinking an energy drink in hopes it'll keep me awake enough to play a round of Halo, with tears threatening to break my laptop's keyboard, whilst reminiscing over shit memories.
This is growing up though, right? Making it through times of heartbreak, reaping the joyous moments, and relishing the memories you have of what you've done. Here's me thinking that I'll never see them again, but hopefully my mam and sister will be coming over this October for a three week visit.
So why do I feel so blue?
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