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.
Copyright © Fiona Caldwell | Year Posted 2015
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