Anon goes home
Anon goes home
75 comments
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I'm a bit older than this and I've been feeling this too. Getting older is weird.
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You feel like a time traveller.
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You are.
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We brought the past with us. We're still here and we're advancing our historical works into the future.
So much of what was old is new again. So much of what was new is now a bedrock upon which the next thing is built.
Do a bit of digging and you'll find it. Do a bit of listening and you can still hear history echo.
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who knew our version of poetry starts with 'be me'
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I yearn for the time when I was a kid. I yearn for the time when the right side of my body functioned almost as good as the left. I yearn to be picked up by my dad, to sneak chocolate chips out of the baking cupboard instead of just buying the damn things from the store. I yearn for my birthday to be an event with gifts and a day I’d anticipate two weeks in advance, instead of remembering I missed it again the following morning, after having spent my birthday at work. I yearn for summers off and I yearn for fifty dollars to be a lot of money with no responsibility.
I yearn for time.
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Personally I’m just yearning for Silksong
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Still unable to let go, huh?
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Wholesome.
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Wholesome, reminiscent, and melancholy.
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I still yearn for the past some days. Days when I would see friends everyday. Days when I didn't have to worry about bills. Days when things were simpler and easy. But, I realize that my life isn't as bad as I thought. Parents rarely fight now. We have money and I'm, for the first time, financially stable. And, I still have a good relationship with my parents. When I visit them, I still go back to when I was a kid. Mom and dad would make my favorite food, I now have access to all my favorite cartoons from when I was a kid thanks to streaming. The big difference is now I can actually help them financially and physically as opposed when I was a scrawny, poor shrimp. I sometimes miss those days, but I'm making the best of what I have now
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Man, I miss having almost no responsibilities and more time on my hands. But I really appreciate your viewpoint, gonna steal this positivity :) Guess my life could be much worse, made some errors but a lot of things turned out nice. Living a better life than my parents at my current age and there are even possibilities for a way upward.
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I wish I had that nostalgia for my hometown. Approaching it just fills me with dread. I hate so much about that place. It reminds me of isolation
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originally from the rural southern usa, i do not miss it
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Was in a car with some coworkers and I realized I'm now the oldest one in the car.
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be me
have been avoiding my parents' house for over a decade
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I've kind of been on both sides of this.
For me, returning to and then leaving my home town triggers feelings of melancholy but also relief. I didn't grow up in a stable, solidly middle-class (or higher) lifestyle, so I'm sure that's a factor.
While I had a good childhood and loving parents, things got complicated the older I became. And even when I happen upon a reminder of the good times or a fond memory, way too often it's tainted by how fucked up things were at the time.
On the other hand, "the kids" ... it's wonderful when they're home for summer. When they're at my house, at least I know they are safe, happy, and that all their needs are being met, in as much as possible. It's sad to see them go, when I know it's going to be months before they're back.
But also, it's a sigh of relief when my life can go back to being on my terms sans drama and chaos. It's almost total bliss when I can go out to the kitchen in my undies for a cup of coffee fully confident that the milk jug won't be sitting in the fridge completely empty (or with a minuscule amount of milk remaining so as to be practically useless but also technically not empty).
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It's nice seeing my parents but everything else in my hometown is depressing.
The things that have changed are depressing because they represent lost youth. But, the things that stayed the same are also depressing, because it means the same bunch of people just spent 30 years on a treadmill and got nowhere.
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Expected this to take a dark turn because anon, was not prepared for warm poetic nostalgia in its place.
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I’m in the second half of my 30s now. I own the house I grew up in, it’s in bad shape, actually about to have it renovated it now. I live and work in a different country for a few years now, making a lot of money, but I dearly miss home. The street, the trees, all the memories of my childhood. It’s in the nice suburbs of an Eastern EU capital, so it has developed/gentrified well, with modern services and stores not far. My father is dead, my mother lives 3 streets from this house, which is also great.
Wife and I are actually considering moving back in a few years, after the renovation is finished. Some things feel priceless - to think we could raise a family in the same house in the same neighbourhood, have our children ride their bike under the same trees, next to the same small stream. None of this would of course be worth it, if we couldn’t make a living there, so we are in a lucky situation, and I understand many are not.
Still, I wonder if this is just some nostalgia for easier times, and if it makes sense to “throw away” a safe life in Western EU that many from this country would kill for, chasing a feeling like this. On the other hand, I think people spend their whole life trying to feel loved, successful and happy, so what else is really there? We can have all the rational components like health, safety and money in place, yet still feel unfulfilled inside.
If we are lucky to live to an old age, we’ll look back on our life to search for meaning and reflect on our choices, what will make the biggest difference? I honestly don’t know
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It sounds like you're comfortable enough to be debt free, but still chasing after something more, despite already having it right there in your backyard.
I don't think you realize how little money you need in order to have a fulfilling life. You can live in the nice neighbourhood and take a low paying, stable job, be frugal, get good insurance, and enjoy the advantages of your class position.
Pardon me if this comes off as overly prescriptive or nihilistic.
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Thanks, good and on point reflection.
I am definitely guilty of always wanting to chase bigger/better things.
Wife and I together are making a quarter of a million euros per year now, and even though tax eats a large part of it, that is an incredible salary in Western EU, especially for people from ex-Soviet countries. Yet I was unhappy that I didn’t make a promotion that would add only around 30k on this, but I wanted the prestige and recognition that comes with it.
You’re right that we only have very little debt, I could pay it off tomorrow, but it’s so cheap it’s better to keep it and finance the renovation from our savings. After that, we could move back to the renovated house in our home city, take a 50% salary cut, and still be fine. Or we could stay in Western EU, continue getting high salaries, then get a citizenship in a few years, and have are kids grow up and be natives here.
Let’s see what the future brings. I’m getting closer and closer to perspective you share in your comment. My unhappiest friend is a millionaire entrepreneur living in Dubai for tax reasons, with 2 kids in expensive private school, fancy apartment with own staff, and a wife that doesn’t seem to love him anymore. I envy his business success, but not his life, and he himself told me we would trade most of his money for a better marriage.
Life is weird, and it’s even weirder that I have some of the deepest and most meaningful online discussions about it with strangers under greentexts.
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I'm still young at 25, but I can see the hallmarks of aging. I've moved to a new state for 5 years now and when I visited my old home it felt half foreign, half familiar. I'm the youngest so my mom's age is starting to show.
Things I consider recent are now described as "years ago". I'm seeing things evolve through life. Things that felt like they had a beginning, middle, end now are starting up again. Almost like a ride that's resetting for the next ones in line.
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The biggest sign of aging for me is when you make a reference to a TV show and the person you share it with goes, "ah that was before my time." Then, you realize it wasn't released a few years ago... But more like a decade or two ago.
The biggest hit was someone who asked me about 9/11 because they weren't alive at the time.
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The other day I was talking in a common interest discord and mentioned that I largely moved from console to PC games in the late 90s. To which I was met with a "jfc how old are you?"
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What sticks out to me, in hindsight, is how much of the development that happened in my early childhood. I remember the large empty track of land next to the highway that was turned into the local mega-mall. I remember the highway itself transforming from a simple flat two-lanes-each-way stretch all the way into downtown. Now its a six-lane overpass that's getting another expansion. I remember the old community swimming pool that's been expanded into a sprawling Aquatic Center. And how the half dozen different church denominations have been consolidated into one big Catholic compound. We have this enormous City Center that was just an abandoned parking lot when my parents moved in.
I also remember how the neighborhood had been comically, painfully white. Way back in the 90s, the town was effectively built on White Flight from the inner city, so it was mostly business and engineer families who'd abandoned downtown. We had a few big immigrant communities, primarily East Asian in character. But Latinos and Black families were kept beyond the county line by a combination of notoriously racist policing and white nationalist affiliated developers and real estate agencies. But all of that lapsed over the subsequent decades - now we have a much more mixed and more minority-affluent population. Hell, we have an East Asian County Judge, which is something that the elderly white now-minority had been fighting tooth and nail for decades.
I have no idea whether I'd say the area is better or worse. Racism hasn't really gone away, it's just much more of an Iranian Expats hating on Indian Expats thing that I'm not involved in. The fact that there's still a ton of money being pumped through the city doesn't hurt. But we still have a lot of greed and corruption and clichishness. There's definitely a noticeable divide between the older and newer parts of the town. And we even have some apartments now, instead of just single-family homes as far as the eye can see.
Time moves on, I guess.
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You can never really go home.
Fuck.
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It's partly why I never felt prey to the nostalgia trends that afflict my generation (x). You can't go back so why not focus on now? I love getting older. I am aware of my parents and my impending mortality but I embrace it.
I miss the house I grew up in. I still have those moments of core memories that come off of a sound, or smell, or touch, but I'm here. The moments are sweeter for knowing I can't return.
The trick is to know that home is in you so it doesn't matter where you are.
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that stability is incredible. i've never really had it. i moved out at 15, after my parents' divorce, and by the time i was done with uni i'd moved 12 times. at that point nobody in the extended family had their original living spaces left, if they were even still alive.
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Must be nice to have had a childhood that evokes that vibe.
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I want to stay in my kitchen forever lol.
I'm fortunate to have had a great childhood full of love and community, but I don't want to be a child, you know? I don't want to go back to, like, a cocoon.
Maybe I'm reading into some of these comments, or maybe I just have a different nostalgia. Just leaving this comment for anyone else who's a bit weirded out. 👋
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For a lot of people just about every aspect of adult life sucks. You cant afford anything, your job is stressful as hell, everywhere you go costs money, your responsible for your own healthcare, etc.
It's not weird at all to be nostalgic about your childhood where you were happy, loved, and carefree (if you were fortunate enough to have had a childhood like that).
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I think it's just different people being in different places in their lives. For some people the stability and safety of the childhood home isn't something they've replicated elsewhere yet, so the nostalgia is all they really have left of that feeling.
Even then they might not want to go back, but just be acutely feeling an absence of that type of security.
I'm sort of in the middle. I have a safe, stable and comfortable environment, and I'm doing my best to preserve that for my kids. I can also remember the feeling of childhood familiarity and just knowing how things will be, and not having the responsibility to keep that stability be mine. And that's a comfortable blanket.
Not one I would want to live in, but having lost both my parents I do wish I could pull that blanket over my lap for a bit every once in a while. -
Normal feelings. I had a decent childhood. My parents fought all the time but nothing beyond that. Still don't want to be in my childhood kitchen forever.
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My parents worked to manufacture this. The white picket fence. The wave to your neighbor that you regularly have over. The Dishonest Harmony...
My parents are christian trumpers. And if I could move farther away, I would.
If you have this, hold onto it.
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Damn onion ninjas
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They must be here too...
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Kind of reminds me of this beautiful poem:
"...And I will leave. but the birds will stay, singing:
and my garden will stay, with its green tree,
and its white water well...
Many afternoons the skies will be calm and blue,
and the bells in the belfry will chime,
like they're chiming this very afternoon.
The people who have loved me will die,
and the town will burst anew every year.
And in the corner of my green, flowering whitewashed garden,
my spirit will wander nostalgic from tree to well.
And I will leave,
and I'll be lonely, without a home,
without a green tree, without a white water well,
without calm and blue skies...
And the birds will stay, singing."
-"El viaje definitivo", Juan Ramón Jiménez
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There's a pretty good chance the house I grew up in will be bulldozed to build a condo complex. The 100+ year-old oak tree might survive, but more than likely it'll be cut down, as will the maples and the plum tree.
The birds will move on.
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Everything stays, but it still chnages.
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The only constant thing in life is change.
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Yeah, I noticed in my late 20s that the world has changed from my childhood. All my childhood sports heroes have retired. New music genres have replaced what I heard on the radio. A lot of my old haunts are still there, but some have been knocked down and replaced. It's an... unsettling feeling when you realize the ground is moving beneath your feet. The best thing you can do is to keep moving yourself (figuratively, not literally). Explore new places, make new hobbies. Fill up your time with new experiences and you won't have as much of a sense of loss.
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The best is when you are lying in bed at night and some odd mix of neurotransmitters unlocks a memory you haven't thought of in years, and then you spend an hour crying about the gulf of time between then and now, for what/who you've lost, and managing the crushing guilt that follows when you feel awful about not tending to the garden of your memories better.
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Aging brings along the realization of how many things only exist in your memory, and even if they are recorded or memorialized no one will ever experience them the way you did.
That restaurant with your parents, That Mall, staying with distant family in some house that was sold 30 years ago or outright bulldozed. Those places are only special to you, and when you cease to exist, they won't be special in the same exact way to anyone else. It's the stupid childhood memories that honestly don't mean anything on their own that feel the worst IMO
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Almost 40 here, I feel the same. Some things evolve, some things get replaced and some mostly stay the same, but the worst is when it feels stagnant or even decaying. That's worse than actual loss in some ways.
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Is it 30,000 pounds of bananas? I bet it's 30,000 pounds of bananas.
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I ate 30,000 pounds of bananas during a road trip once. I was on my way to see the biggest ball of twine in Minnesota.
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This feels like it could be turned into a poem without too much adjustment
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Greentext is already a form of poetry
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Just yesterday, I was thinking how after my parents pass — hopefully not for another a decade or two, if I'm lucky — I'm likely the first one in line on the ol' chopping block because I'm the oldest child of my family. Kinda put shit in perspective, but not really at the same time because our brains are so good at turning a blind eye to our eventual death.
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Also, dont overlook the value of healthy habits.
I've seen younger siblings who subsisted on coke and PB&j in their retirement pass before their older ones.
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That's true. But I'd rather go first because I HATE it when my siblings cut in front of me in line.
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You can't go home again. -Thomas Wolfe
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In the words of NK Jemisen:
"Home is what you take with you, not what you leave behind."
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😭😭😭
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The last couple of times visiting my grand parents house around the time they were in a nursing home and after they passed away was surreal. The house was rotting as they did. Everything is like I remember, but there's some mold in things, rotten wooden stairs that broke when I walked in them. The thing that just really upset me was after they passed my uncle moved in and smoked inside so everything smelled like smoke. It was disgusting. I don't know how he could choose to ruin his childhood home like that. Maybe he's totally noseblind to it. The shitty thing was that it also technically wasn't his house at the time. They've all sorted it out now but he just sort of moved in without really getting permission from his siblings.
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This reminds me so much of John Greens writing, check him out if you like some melancholic writing.
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I forget that not every family thrives on each other's pain and suffering like mine does.
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The most pernicious self-deception is that things are as they appear to be. The second is that they should be.
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This sounds pithy and interesting but I'm not quite sure I can decipher it.
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75 comments
I got no place to go back too. I don't have anyone waiting for me anywhere.