Visiting places you lived in before

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Did you have such an experience? How did it make you feel? Were those places very changed in comparison with what they used to look like many years ago? Today I visited my grandparents' old farm. I used to live there as a toddler and for many years afterwards I used to visit this place (up until I was in my middle teens, I was spending all my summer holidays in there). This place was to me what Cavendish was to L. M. Montgomery. So today we went there. The last time we did before, was last summer and previously - in 2008. It was a weird experience - everything was changed. The old tree that used to grow in there, was gone. Trees I remembered as young small trees, are now fully grown.

Later we visited my aunt who has 3 white and red dogs which are so similar to each other that I couldn't recognize which one was which and kept asking about this and my cousin said that if I asked this question once more, he would have to start doubting my intelligence- but they looked practically the same

I would love to visit the place I lived in for the first three years of my life too.

Generally I don't do happy memories, so I don't do visits to places I used to live too. True, sometimes I feel an urge to do this but when I stop and think about it, I can't see the point of doing it, so I don't.

I got to visit where my Dad grew up. It was really cool.

I have done it. It wasn't as satisfying as I thought it would be.

Sure, there were happy memories but they were in the past. The whole experience just reminded me I need to keep looking forward and appreciate what I have right now.

In years past, I have occasionally acted upon yearnings to go visit previous places, and my most favorite of all was "The Big Tree" where I played in it, on it and all around it up until about age 12 or 13. Later in life, I once took a date for a ride in a rowboat in the middle of a night on the lake where I had lived during my high-School years ... and those two places, that tree and the lake, were places that had always felt "most like home" to me until I finally arrived here on WP.

Not long ago I signed on for a workshop held at the junior high school I had attended nearly 50 years before. I wasn't interested in the workshop, I just wanted to get inside the building again. And other than seeming a little smaller than I remembered, it was exactly the same, right down to the rickety wooden stairs that seemed frighteningly decrepit when I was a student there. (There were new braces underneath the stairs, though--I checked.)

At first I was pleased to visit an intact childhood memory, but then I realized what it meant. The school was hopelessly dated; if they hadn't made any attempt to remodel, it was coming down. Two years later it was razed without so much as a mention in the newspaper; one day I drove by and it was just gone. A new school went up on the site and didn't even take the old one's historic name. So I'm glad to have had the opportunity for one last visit.

I couldn't do such a thing. I have very emotional memories of the things that went wrong. I'm better off living in the moment and appreciating the 60s.

Yeah, it's depressing.
I've been by a couple of the houses I lived in before (one locally and one in another state)
and in both cases, the current occupants let the place go to hell and either neglected or actually wrecked many the improvements that our family ever made to the house.
Too many bad memories also.

Some of my closest friends used to live in a house behind my own. The house is empty right now, and every now and then I like to go into its back yard and peer through the windows.

I've also been wanting to visit my elementary school and see some of my old teachers, I just haven't taken the initiative to plan a ride or anything. I haven't been up there in six years.

Does my parent's house count? I lived in it in high school and after I graduated until I moved out. What about the one I lived in when I lived on my own for a year and a half? What about my aunt and uncle's when I lived with them for seven months?

The house I lived in when I was 13-16 burned down because of our renter used these frenzy extension cords and it started a fire. So we had firemen come out and burn the rest down since the damage was too severe to be fixed.

I have seen my old house in Washington and it looks the same as we left it when we moved but my old playhouse was falling apart and rotting. The trees we planted there had grown a lot. The sandbox is still there and the pebble pit where we had our swing set and then trampoline.

I have visited the house here in Portland where I lived as a baby until I was three. The house has been painted pink and the whole front is covered in bushes, and the front door has been replaced and there is now AC.

Whenever I go up to New York to see my boyfriend and/or family, I will sometimes visit the town I grew up in. I like going back to the places I used to hang out and, well, just hang out there again. Most of the people I knew have moved out, which I like cuz I feel extremely awkward running into someone I haven't seen in a very long time.

When I was 16, I returned to live in a place I grew up in and it shattered the memories (or illusions, rather) that I had of it.

Jean Rhys describes the feeling rather well in Good Morning, Midnight.

I would never like to visit places of my past
it would just trigger all old wounds, pains and traumas
plus people of my past are not interested in me
they totally avoid me
i have burned all bridges with my past

The only safe place for me in my childhood in th early 60s was a childrens home, a beautifull mansion in the countryside.
Not only was it a building, it was also the place where my "family" was, my family being the other abandoned kids and the house parents who didnt do things like kick us in the stomach like "real" parents do.

I never saw it for nearly 40 years, except in the frequent dreams I had where I found all my "family" where still there and really pleased to see me.

So, thanks to the marvels of the internet, I managed to find the place and went to visist, made enquireies at the pub across the road, and was told the banker who then owned the place was coming in for dinner, a couple of hours later and I was being showed inside.
This place was like a mystical realm to me by now, after all these years, almost as if it had never even existed, you can imagine how wonderfull it was to be inside again, a real tangible contact with my past, the only downside being of course, it was no longer a childrens home. all my "family" had gone, as if they where dead, never to be seen again.

I have been back a couple of times to visit the place I lived in early childhood, for nostalgia's sake and to see if anything much had changed, though I haven't been in a few years. It's a village in Scotland, and in a very picturesque setting. But whenever I have been back there, I have had this strange and quite palpable feeling that I shouldn't be there. There are reasons for that I won't go into, but it's certainly not because I have bad memories of the place, unlike some other places I lived in later. And it's funny how it always seems like it's in miniature, like Toytown, suddenly shrunk, especially the immediate area around the flat. It should be obvious why, from living there as a small child compared to being back as an adult.

I drove by the house I lived in when I was <10. When I was a kid, the back yard seemed to go on forever, and the trees behind it were miles and miles away. But when I went back, the trees weren't very far from the house at all.
It did feel odd, though, knowing someone else was living in that house. I would have rather burned it when my parents died. But I guess we needed the money.