Neither someone who has lived in one place their whole life nor someone who emigrated and anchored themselves elsewhere for good can understand this. When you leave the land where you grew up, not by chance but by choice, after some time, you may find yourself longing not for the sun, warmth, blue skies, or the year-round cozy greenery. People who move from point A to point B because they believe everyone in point A is stuck—weather-wise, mentally, or materially—tend to yearn for a change of scenery. They choose what they see as better: countries with better views, better standards, or a higher hourly rate. From there, they send cheerful postcards back home as if to reassure them they’ve made the right choice.

My longing has nothing to do with returning to better views or standards because what’s better is entirely relative. What’s better is personal, subjective, and changes depending on one’s evolving needs. There’s no point imposing anything on anyone. For example, some people aren’t bothered by smog. Not only don’t they feel it, but they don’t mind running in it. Others like to overindulge in alcohol. Even though their body suffers, they feel it mentally resets them.

But there’s a type of longing where you even miss the wind and the rain, the raw air that lashes at your cheeks, the cliffs, the waves, or even the smell of fish at the market. When you long for a specific kind of wind that might have even had a name when you experienced it, for a specific kind of rain, its frequency, the distinct scent of streets after the rain. When you miss the sun that shines but doesn’t warm you, and you miss it so much that your body feels the physical ache of its absence. That’s when you know this longing stems from the relationship you had with that place, not just the external stimuli.

And that’s usually when you hear from friends, or sometimes even family, that you might as well see a psychiatrist. They look at you, throw up their hands because they can’t understand—how can anyone feel like a seal and miss some kind of weather phenomenon with a questionable reputation thousands of kilometers away? “But how?” they ask. Because it doesn’t fit in their heads.