“After everything that one has experienced during their moments away from home, do they ever regret returning and wish they had just stayed back instead of going home?”

Yes; in some circumstances some in fact do think it would have been better to just stay where they were at currently instead of returning home. Some may see this opportunity as an escape from reality, an escape from what they have to face every day back at their hometown, in school, work, or any other place that is considered their rightful “home.” In Unconscious Nightmare, two childhood friends, Yin Todd and Yang Ai, mysteriously wake up in another world apart from Earth called Misuteria. Yin reminisces on his past when he was bullied and mistreated by others for having heterochromia–a condition where he was born with one blue and one amber eye. Thus, when he appears here, he thinks to himself, “Don’t worry? What is there to worry about? I don’t want to go back, because I feel so free now.” 

However, not all situations are like this. In reality, you can never escape to some sort of fantasy world to leave your problems behind. After being away for so long, some people are relieved to hear that they’ll be going home soon, but there will be some situations where they will not recognize their home as it was before. It has become a strange place to them, and although they essentially returned home, they don’t feel at home. An example of this from All Quiet on the Western Front is when Paul Bäumer goes on leave and visits his mother and sister again at home, yet when he steps into the house, he does not feel any warmth or welcoming atmosphere. It was as if the place he grew up in transformed into something else, a stranger. He thinks, “I find I do not belong here anymore. It is a foreign world.”