Bad idea. As bad as doom scrolling.

horsetuna

1120

What affected me most I think was the most recent family home being gone. They even took out the plants and trees.

The upsetting part to me wasn't the home itself. It could have burnt down for all I care (so long as nothing else or nobody else is harmed). What upsets me? Mom buried several of her birds there. Even though it was so long ago there would be no remains. Z

I don't know why the other locations upset me. I've been thinking about mom and dad a lot. Mom is still alive but I've cut all ties to her when she refused to even watch movies with me recently if they contained magic. It's a religious thing.

I don't want to bash religion but now I call into question the sincerity of my childhood. It wasn't a good childhood. But the best memories were still Disney movies, Christmas... She got me into fantasy. Dragon riders of Pern. Xanth. Santa. Was it all faked?

I don't know. These locations haunt me in my stress dreams. Especially around my teen years and after when things got really bad, and some after I had escaped

Maybe going on memory lane was a mistake.

I don't remember where we lived in Goose bay, or Selkirk. I remember cold lake AFB (can't see the house may be repainted), grand centre (both locations, although one I can't recognize) and even found the creeks I played in. Then the last family home that's gone.

It was a mistake. I guess I wanted to see if it's still there.

Fuck.

depression

memes

memories

socially_awesome_awkward_penguin

trauma

RetrogradeLlama

Looking back is always a major risk. Just stick with the memories in your head.

1 month ago |

PresldentClef

Vibes. Major vibes 'ere. :<

Thesonshade

I do the same to my ol hometown. Cams showing decline. Glad I moved.

beemarr

I recently found some YouTube videos of a guy driving around the place where I grew up. I guess he wanted to film the area, as he would also be leaving there soon. Was quite the feeling just seeing those streets and all the familiar places from when I was just a kid. It's been decades since I was there, but I could still clearly remember every turn and every road. Was a very bittersweet feeling, in that I still remembered it all so clearly, but also that I would never be able to go back there.

HonHomes

Yeah. I have vague memories of my childhood house, sold and moved away from in about 2002. Looked at it on google maps a few years ago, it's all different now and that's sad, but it isn't awful, just slightly sad because it's changed and my first home is different.
The second house, that I have clearer memories of and put a lot of effort into the land as well... yeah, I hate what's been done to the place, and thinking about it makes me sad in an entirely different and worse way.

TankoJoe

The label said "Nostalgia" but the can was actually full of Pathos. The things I was fond of have been replaced with something else, and the things that are tied to unpleasant memories persist.

It's odd, a lot of the small towns are almost identical as to when I left. When I went back a few years ago I think 20 years after I left to visit my mother before I broke up with her, it was like time had never changed. Same stores, same people working the stores even. Okay one or two stores were different but everything else was exactly the same. It was almost creepy

Centroid

You can never go home

Sometimes it's a blessing. The late teen years building I mentioned in itself and even the many items left in it I feel no sadness for. Even the few remaining childhood things there. It was a miserable place.

And yet somehow I'm upset looking at these places. Especially the earlier ones. Maybe it's that those times were better the further back.

Feelings are complicated and sometimes I don't want them.

GravyEducation

I just had to move. This shit sucks.

JRaven419

Never meet your heroes.

ImAWeirdMom

My favorite place that I grew up is gone too, no clue why, but every single building that existed on that farm no longer exists.

ArtsyFartsyParrotMama

Writing about these things can help you to process the emotions you’re feeling. Get a blank journal or composition book and write until your hand goes numb and there’s nothing left inside you to come out. Hugs, OP.

Private rage posting in a way. Yeah. I like it

100%. Get a great pen ergonomic though. You could really hurt yourself with as much rage as you’ve got pent up inside you.

Gotcha. I wonder if rage typing is the same. Just fill up google.

Thanks so much. I do feel better.

SmashySashimi

Religion makes people do stupid, horrible things; cut off the best parts of themselves. I wouldn't question the sincerity of those memories, OP. I'd question her mental state now and the motives for her current zeal. Not saying you can get her back, just that clearly there are outside influences for her behavior now.

And what she says they don't even you know, help her or anything like that so like, what's the point?

Sorry, I'm not quite sure what you're asking; what's the point of religion? It gives authorities authority, and the rest get a sense of security over their fears or a feeling of control over their lives.

marthafarquar

Into my heart an air that kills from yon far country blows: What are those blue remembered hills, what spires, what farms are those? That is the land of lost content, I see it shining plain, The happy highways where I went and cannot come again. A. E. Housman (1859 –1936)

Whatdoyousaytoanicecupoftea

Fuckin' having it, m8

An E. Houseman

So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

Robert Frost

LittleDragon

Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
And the dark street winds and bends
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And watch where the chalk-white arrows go
To the place where the sidewalk ends.

spontaneous9

I was pretty crushed when mom sold the house I grew up in. Last time I visited, when we were just driving around running errands, it was very clear that the woods and the creek I spent thousands of hours in, the ponds we skated on, the farmers' pasture land, all of it GONE. All developed. Big superhighway cutting right through all those rolling hills, the back country roads we rode bikes on, just nothing left.

Then the house. I can't blame her for selling it. There's nothing to go back to.

I found I've had no emotional attachment to the house itself, or even the stuff that was lost you know? Maybe it's because time healed me a little bit.

But then again, if I didn't have an attachment why was I so upset?

It's true what they say about growing up: "You can never go home again."

It's not necessarily that the house is no longer there, either. In my case, I know that house is probably still there. It's ME who has changed.

I'm getting all philosophical now. What is home to me? Airforce brat so we moved a lot. I hated living with my mom. Probably would have run away but I was afraid. Maybe home is the time more than the geography.

whiskeywonka

Wanting to recapture simpler times is normal. Memories are always bitter sweet.

When we cremated my dad, he requested to be scattered in a specific spot. I marked that spot. I've often considered going back to it. But it's just a fuckin waypoint that doesn't mean much to me

And yes life was simpler. And nicer period my parents were together and mow my mom was not so... Bad

I even found the cinema where I saw the Lion King in 1991. But I couldn't find the road where I learned to ride a bike, or where I saw my first rainbow. At least the first rainbow I remember. But after 40 years it's bound to have changed.

Be lucky you have that much. My mother was a gypsy, at 9 my father died. After that we never lived anyplace for much more than a year and often just months, a few just weeks. The farm my grandfather had is gone, a subdivision is there with trashy copy pasta homes. The woods are gone. The 100ft pine that I fell out of was there 15 years ago but is gone now. Take pictures, write down stories.

Eventually it will all be gone. Mom was abusive. I wish I had the nerve to ask to live with my dad. Mom claims he abused me so bad I forgot the trauma but I don't believe it.

Soluxiis

Hope you're ok, OP. It must be hard having to live with those memories, and your relationship with your mom sounds complicated. Hang in there

It's so complicated and sore my feelings and I hate it.

I feel no longing for her I don't want to see her I don't want even want to talk to her

And yet I feel bad that I'm not talking to her. That she's alone and nobody talks to her or visit her.

And I told her in the last email when I finally got upset with her that I only did it because I felt bad for her but I couldn't anymore. So I don't even think I can start again. I've already gone back once.

It's not the wrong move to make, by the sounds of things. You've got to think of your own needs and feelings, and if the relationship is one where you're effectively a human punching bag (emotionally) that's a pretty toxic situation that you're better off without.

Definitely. And I'm not trying to you know, defend her. She's she knows not to talk about the past with me and such. A cordial relationship you could say. But I guess just talking to her I don't know I feel like I just want to hear to fight. I want to fight her. I want her to feel bad about how she treated me. But that's not also the right thing to do.

Maybe I should do it like when you can send anonymous care packages to soldiers and stuff. Just send her stuff but not talk to her.

Sorry about all of that. I do know that I need some sort of professional help, but I found that counselors and crisis lives they just found all canned. It doesn't sound like it actually helpful. They just say that my feelings are valid etc and affirm that my feelings are what they are.

No worries! It definitely sounds like there's a few unresolved issues there. Professional help can be useful, and if it seems like they're giving canned responses, that's often simply because these are approaches that have worked for the majority of people in the past. I'm far from an expert but personally I'd say that it's pointless trying to reopen old wounds, and you can't rely on people to admit or realise their wrongs, and certainly not to say the things you'd like to hear from them.

Maybe I want her to admit she was wrong. But all she does is say okay and drop it.

Comments (42)