Going back to the place you grew up in after moving away

When was the last time you did this, if you still do? I've been back in Dublin this week and it's very strange.

Some parts of it are good, you can see familiar things through a different eye and feel happy not to be in the same old places etc. But I also find you feel that you don't really belong anymore, even somewhere where you know everything and have been everywhere. Even friends and stuff have their own lives, you're just kinda slotting in for a couple of hours and then gone again. All the shared stories are from long ago.

It's really odd, I don't feel homesick really, but there's a weird pull where I imagine how easy it would be to slot back into where I used to live, or how I could stop myself feeling out of place there by going back. I don't want to though!

It's strange to think of being detached from the place I grew up, something about that in itself is hard. Then I guess as a side issue I feel sorry for my parents being on their own as I'm the youngest.

Do you go home often? Is the family home etc still there? It's a really weird mix of emotions, I can't tell if I'm dreading or looking forward to the next time.

Any of this sound familiar?

On a weird level, I'm kind of jealous of people who actually have one "place they grew up in" to go back to.

Even the place we spent the longest (family home for about 10 years) has been sold and none of my family live anywhere near any of the places that we lived when I was young. I suppose moving to London for me was the closest thing I could get to "moving back home".

So, to answer yr question, no, it sounds really really alien. I know no place like that.

To a large extent, this doesn't really apply to me -- I was a military brat, so we didn't have a "family home" or a hometown as such. Although the place I always sort of considered "home base," my grandparents' house in northeastern Ohio, hasn't changed much at all, nor has the town it's in. I get to see it often, because my grandmother still lives there as she has for the past 40 years, and my mother lives only 10 minutes away.

The one time I did get to experience something like it was back in 2002. I spent a month living and working in Frankfurt, and got to spend a weekend visiting Darmstadt, where my family was stationed for three years in the late 1970s. After 23 years, nothing about where we lived had changed AT ALL, except that rather than being US military housing, the apartment buildings were now occupied by local residents. It was overwhelmingly nostalgia-inducing.

I'm doing it right now, after a year out of the country, and that does sound pretty familiar. Different, though, in that I'm the oldest and first out of the house. The next oldest envies me for being able to "get out." That's how most of us think about it in my family, as a place with a lack of opportunity and excitement that we've always planned to leave. I do feel bad that my mom misses me, though, and I'm not going anywhere close enough to visit much.

It's nice to be home but I have the feeling of just passing through. Maybe since I'm in a small town, and I only come back for breaks between school & employment, I can't imagine slotting back into place without thinking it would be like a regression. That's really unfair, I know people from high school who have set up their own adult lives here, but anyway I'm moving to a city in a week and a half. On the other hand, I know I'm lucky to have a place to come back to.

And I'm standing on a bridge
In the town where I lived
As a kid with my mom
And my brothers
And then the bridge disappears
And i'm standing on air
With nothing holding me
And i hang like a star
Fucking glowing in the dark
FOr all the starving eyes to see
http://www4.pictures.zimbio.com/img/0bfa/TheZimbioTeam/133s.jpg

No that sounds very familiar Maria. It definitely would be a regression for me too, but could easily imagine it still. An easy lazy regression! I always have thought of where I grew up as a place with a lack of opportunity (the entire country) but I still find the tug of familiarity is strong.

It is nice coming back and seeing things are the exact same, the shop, the house even. But it's also really weird to me to feel like a tourist sort of in my home city. I went shopping in Dublin city today just to walk around, no intention of buying anything. And it was really odd, I realised after an hour I was systematically going to places I used to work in, or past pubs I liked, or into shops I'd go to with ex gf etc...

I'm only gone 7 months but these feelings seems stronger each time I come home.

I don't have shared stories or friends in my hometown, I only go back to visit my family and visit the general vicinity of the family home. There's no one else I want to see; anyone the slightest bit ambitious or interesting moved away for school and further away for careers, basically like I did. So...nah, I don't mind that life in Whitehall goes on without me, I didn't much want to be part of it when I was there.

I go back sometimes and walk past my old house in Acton, and go to Acton Park, and walk the walk to my primary/junior school. It all depends on how I am feeling generally when I go there. If I'm sad, I'm gonna feel sadder, and truth be told I've ever gone back when I'm of a melancholy disposition. I've no family or friends in Acton, so it's just the feel of the place really, but it does always feel like home. I had a mostly awesome childhood.

My town has changed a lot physically in the year I've been gone, it's crazy. New stores, roads, traffic lights...just a lot of retail development, but seeing big buildings where previously there were fields is strange.

I guess I am a lazy sod and I've never really considered the opportunity of getting out there (despite listening to lots of 'wo-ha you can make it if you try' rock songs)...

Acton/Ealing never really changes, it's the air.

sometimes think it'd be nice to remain 11 years old, all family at home, nobody getting older.

I go back to where I grew up quite frequently. My parents still live in the same house I spent the bulk of my childhood in. I have a few friends around and they're good to see, but like Ronan said they have their own lives. It's a college town, so there has always been a large transient population. Because of this some things change wildly even while other, older institutions remain almost completely the same.

I think about it a lot because it's so different from where I live now. I miss things that are commonplace there but totally impossible here. All that said, at this point in my life I can't really imagine living there right now. I still keep the idea in the back of my head that I will go back to stay one day.

I'm unfortunately with Kate up at the top there - my family moved so many times in the general southern Ontario area that no particular neighbourhood is "home" to me, but memories do surface of each segment of my life when I find myself in them. I went to 7 grade schools in 8 years :P Whenever I visit those places, I am struck by how much taller I feel and how much smaller everything else feels.

also,
And I'm standing on a bridge
In the town where I lived
As a kid with my mom
And my brothers
Used to be jealous of these lines! Damn you, Oberst, and your quiet Omaha upbringing...

going home = dud

My family all live within the same 30 mile radius as they did when I grew up. We never owned a house though and nobody lives in place where I ever did growing up. So I stay in hotels when I visit. Which is usually only once a year. Tops.

I haven't been home in almost a year, but I know EXACTLY what would occur. I would go straight to my parents' home, hang out there, maybe spend the night, and then leave without stopping anywhere else.

There are still some folks there that I grew up with, but almost all of my good friends either moved away or are no longer my good friends. So, ah well.

key texts:
the smiths - back to the old house
larkin - home is so sad

the last time I went home to Louisville, Kentucky, it made me feel really strange and emotional, but mostly emotional about the difference between what I was expecting to feel in certain environments and places and what I actually felt- it finally "clicked" that the memories were only stored within me and were not stored in the location that survived in the present moment just fine thank you. the space was indifferent to my desire to go backwards and wasn't some kind of battery of affective energy or bottle full of memory genies. Hard to take.

i have no sentimental feelings towards the place i grew up in at all - even though i lived there for 16 years. i go back occasionally as my brother still lives there but it just feels like any other place that has some vague familiarity to me. when i went back more frequently in the three or four years after i first left, the place gave me the creeps.

I moved back "home" in 2001 and hate it here.

my parents live in the house i grew up in.
my mother teaches at the school i attended.
my next door neighbor from childhood (age 6+) is still my friend

i used to wax philosophic and nostalgic about home from my abode in england or new york or california, but ... when i'm at home i end up waxing philosophic + nostalgic about ye olden times, instead.

the encapsulating experience of 'home' really needs a temporal limiter to make sense. the idea that you can go back to some sacrosanct childhood space by visiting the same physical location of its happening is pretty false, and inevitably sad-making.

sometimes think it'd be nice to remain 11 years old, all family at home, nobody getting older.

― Ronan, Wednesday, October 1, 2008 5:42 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

This is part of the reason I don't want to stay here, it's not like that any more (okay, family's still home, but different, and friends are gone).

I imagine how easy it would be to slot back into where I used to live

i feel like that sometimes--romanticize going home, like it would be so much easier there & i would be taken care of. which is true to some extent.

but when i go home i feel like a visitor. my mom has moved from the city where we grew up and everything is hers; it doesn't feel shared anymore. i get antsy. feel kind of stuck between me as an angry 15 year old and me as an adult (whatever that means). but i can't really be an adult in my mom's house, reading my old books, far from areas in which i'm competent.

going home makes me appreciate more living in nyc, though. i went home for a week over xmas last year & started getting nostalgic for the trains--that's effed up!

I moved away from my hometown, moved away, moved back for 7 years where I lived in my own place with my wife, then moved away two years ago. So I have two very different eras, one living with my parents / living in college housing and later living as a quasi-adult.

Going back now is weird because I stay with my parents or in-laws, which is a new experience because I had my own place in that town for so long. It's kind of artificial and foreign feeling, no nostalgia or memory because I'm crashing in houses I visited with people I saw frequently but not for days at a time, and my fondest memories of where we lived and our friends are mostly gone. Plus my inlaws are divorced so one of there's the house my wife grew up in and a new foreign one with new people living in each. All of it makes it so awkward and unpleasant.

But I do want to live there again, some day, far in the future.

"I grew up in my hometown, moved away, moved back..."

I haven't been home to Hertfordshire in th UK for many years, i'm now in Sydney Australia, but from any contact i have with home, it appears that no one has moved away, & nothing has changed apart from people settling and having children etc, and it feels to me that so much has happened in my life in that time, and that things back there have in some way stagnated, so despite the obvious pleasure in catching up with family, that i feel no great incentive to revisit my past.

never really stayed in any one home/area long enough to have this kind of nostalgia- nearest place was probably my aunt's place (would have been my mother's 'family home') which is about an hour away. don't visit much, but take a drive around the island every few weeks. nice kind of nostalgia/recognition.

meeting up with close school/college friends every couple of weeks is a much stronger reminder of growing up.

My mum still lives in Bothwell so I go up there regularly. I always look forward to it and don't get bothered by the past since everyone I was at school with has long since moved away - I just enjoy the simple nostalgia and simple pleasures when I'm there.

The next time, though, will be a new experience since I'll be taking my wife with me, who'll be seeing the places where I grew up for the first time. I'm really excited about seeing it anew through her eyes.

I just enjoy the simple nostalgia and simple pleasures when I'm there.

Paisley's not really a town that engenders nostalgia... or pleasure, for that matter

How can it not engender pleasure? It's full of PAISLEY.

(kidding)

Speaking of Paisley, has anyone found Gerry Rafferty yet?

Eh?

Isn't this the plot of Garden State?

Too all intents and purposes I'm still in the place where I grew up, but I still get that weird twinge when going back to the street my parents live on. Also, I think everything looks really small, which is odd.

Gerry Rafferty missing.

Weird. Likes a wee swally I hear, does Gerry.

He's found!
http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/news/general_music_news/gerry_rafferty_still_missing.html

I served him in a restaurant just off Piccadilly Circus tonight, then helped him to his hotel.

Blotto again?

My mate was in St Austell, which I've not been back to since... 2002? 03 maybe, last week and texted me to tell me so. Simply said "this place is grim"

St Austell = Cornwall, closest Premiership club = Portsmouth, CONFESS ALREADY MARTIAN

Two places

Hong Kong - lived when I was a child until 12 so too young to remember much about it and certainly very few aspects of life happened there then applies to me now.

Milton Keynes - grew up proper there I guess (secondary school years), some school friends still there, I still remember the place well etc.

My family still live in Hong Kong and I think I miss that and being with them much more than I miss either places per se. The longer I'm away from family this way the more I miss them, the longer I'm away from MK (or other places I live in) the less I do, possibly because many people have moved away from there since also.

it was super weird going back to the little district in hong kong i lived in between 3-9 a couple of years back, having never been back before - the place was like a scary giantic metropolis back when i was really young. now i see it's just a tiny place with a little square.

TS: HK v MK

"You grow up, grow old, or you hit the road round here"

I try to visit my parents once a year. It's very, very odd going back, particularly since most of my friends have either left the state altogether or have moved into the Twin Cities proper; JJ and I used to live a mile apart on a gravel road, now it takes me at least 40 minutes to get from my parents' house to his.

All of my nostalgia is tied to people rather than places, so the complete disconnect I feel when wandering around my home town pretty much matches how I felt when I lived there.

Damn, I think there's something wrong with me, coz I connect more easily to places than people :(

Last Christmas I went back to New Zealand for the first time in 5 years. My parents were in a different house, my brother lives in London, sister in Singapore...there's not much drawing me back. New Zealand has changed a lot since I lived there for any length of time (1997 I think), and I feel virtually no tie to it now. I don't really mind this - I don't miss it, or get sentimental about childhood. Of course it feels smaller than I remember, simpler, a little sadder somehow. But that's probably also associated with getting older.