Abersickness

A not-quite-there longing for somewhere not quite home. A transient town with a shifting population: three-year stint students refreshed each September like a busy webpage, locals who’ve lived there for years like anywhere, visitors who come and go and occasionally never leave. It’s a bubble on the Welsh coast, a semi-urban jigsaw of business and learning in the vertigo of hills and sea. It’s a safety net for the semi-lost or the liminals, a merperson of a town. Abersick: a common term to describe the vertiginous nostalgia that can occur once gone. Nothing concrete; a faint yearning for something that only really exists in your mind, nothing you could put your finger on. Like thoughts. There’s a strange energy to the town that pulses in the tides. It’s the sort of feeling that pulls in your chest like magnets or pheromones, makes you want to run forever down a stormy seafront or leap into the windy sky and fly. In Aberystwyth, you can do anything. Abersickness: the state of missing a town that feels like home. It’s physical, sharpens like salt in your veins and spins your mind. Once Aber’s in your blood, you’ll never leave.