Wait, is that my house?

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So this was on my mind because my sister brought it up more generally (not the part I'm going to describe, but the houses we lived in as children and teenagers).

I lived in one house from about 1971 until 1980, and then another from 1980 until 1985. These two houses are pretty where all my childhood memories are, good and bad.

Several years ago I decided to take a look at them. I mean, I was living less than a mile from the 80s house (and my old middle school was behind my backyard, so that's how close) and two of my close friends lived very close to the 70s house.

The 70s house, when I lived in it was a kind of yellowish tan color, had a porch that extended from the front door, around to the right side (facing the house from the street), with a picture window facing the street and a second picture window facing the driveway to the right. The driveway itself had gravel rather than paving. The lawn was grass with some small flowering trees planted around the porch. It had two stories and an attic, with a bedroom window looking out onto the street on the second floor, and attic windows above that. There was also a sloping roof marking each floor, right below the windows - I actually climbed out of the bedroom windows and onto the roof, and got into some trouble. I had some exciting daredevil instincts before I got older. Anyway, along the left side of the house was a narrow dirt path leading to the back yard.

When I went back to look at this, the lawn had been landscaped with stepping stones and barkdust, bushes, and flowers. The trees next to the porch were gone. The house itself had been painted a peach-ish color, and the path along the left had been filled with trees. The driveway had been paved over. At the time I saw this? I couldn't actually tell whether I was at the right house or not. I came to the conclusion that it had to be the correct house because it was too old to be recent construction, and the architecture matched the house I remembered. Now when I look at it on google street view, it's recognizable to me because I know all the points of similarity to look for, but the first time was a shock.

The 80s house was a two-story house with a balcony with two gigantic yards - one on each side, big enough to hold another entire house. The house it self was a kind of bluish-gray, and had a fairly tall evergreen in the yard to the right, toward the sidewalk, and a mature apple tree in the yard to the left, toward the back part of the yard. When I went to look at this house, there was a house with cyclone fence to the right, facing the cross street, and a landscaped garden with an iron fence to the left. There had been a church on the far side of the yard to the left, and it is now a house. The house itself is still there, the paint is the same - and peeling. There's a driveway to the left of the house. I still have trouble recognizing this house, I have to check over everything a couple times to make sure it's right because the surrounding context is so different.

... Similarly, whenever someone rearranges the furniture, I have to pause and work out what's wrong because I do not quite recognize what I see.

I don't usually get upset, but I get visibly confused, at least enough for someone to outright tell me, "We rearranged the furniture."

On the other hand, when I look for something that should be in its usual place (dishes, food in the refrigerator) and it's not where it should be my brain starts to take off in a kind of frustrated escalation from which I have to consciously talk myself down. I once pissed off my niece badly because she thought I had told her to calm down when I was about to lose my temper because the paper plates were not where I expected them to be.

My parents used to clean my room a lot when I child, rearrange it, swap my sister and I from one bedroom to another. This was pretty stressful. I suspect they didn't want me to find anything, ever.

I had kind of the same thing happen a couple years back. My girlfriend at the time had a friend who lived in the house I lived in back in middle and high school. She and I went over one day and I hardly recognized the place and there'd only been about a 7-8 yr lapse.

My dad is always complaining his tools were moved, although we often did not move them and we do not know what he is talking about.

My grandma visited while I was working full time a few months ago and I didn't have time to clean my room. She decided to clean it for me, walking into the room I couldn't tell where anything was because I had made the mess and now the mess was gone without me undoing the mess it was completely alien to me. It took me weeks to find things after she did that and I had a melt down at the time which was very embarassing. I felt bad because my Grandma is a sweet old women who is always good intentioned.

I think we grow an attachment to the way things are visually, and when things are out of place it's like losing car keys and we are left to piece it all together. Except it's harder because we can't trace our steps backwards to something we didn't do ourselves.

The thought of anyone entering my bedroom gives me serious anxiety. It's one of the things that can actually keep me from going out if I think of it before I'm out the door. I know it's not even a rational concern - no one disturbs my room when I'm gone. But the thought of it is paralyzing.

I've been back to my childhood house. One, it was very different. i do not want to do it again, because I'm afraid my memories will change to fit the new look. I saw pics of it online recently. when i grew up it had a huge tree in the back and was a beige color. now it's blue with bricks, a different door, a paved path, no tree and a strange garage.

I also like to go back and visit old houses i used to live in.

I don't have to go very far- I've never moved though I am soon.

The interesting thing to me at the time was that there's a busy street near the second house where very little has changed, to the point that I felt a dreamlike quality walking through the area due to the intense familiarity.

I've seen my old house here and up in Washington. Our house in WA is the way we left it. The porch is still there and our old basketball hoop, the rocks in our backyard where we had our swing set and then trampoline, the sand box, and even the house is still painted the same color. But the trees have grown. But last time I saw that house, my old playhouse was gone. Last time I saw it, it was decaying. Either the people finally threw it out or it fell down.

The house here, it is now painted pink and ugh the yard is all covered in bushes and shrubs and the front door is different. The house even has AC now.

The house I lived in when I was 13-16 no longer exists because one of my parents renters burned it because she used those thin extension cords and one of them melted and set her clothes on fire and burned the place and the fire damage was too severe to even fix it. So we had the rest burn down by the fire department and my parents built a new house there and rented it out and now they are going to sell it. Even the trees that used to be in that yard got all cut down.

The other house I lived in from 16-19 has changed slightly. My parents made the yard nicer and expended one of their porches, my mom worked on her flower beds and now the look nicer.

The other house I lived in on my own for a year and a half still looks the same the way it was left.

I once went back to the house I'd lived in with my parents from about the age of four until twenty. I'd not seen it for nearly twenty years.
The first thing I noticed was how small everything seemed: the house, the streets, the gardens.
It had been "grandified": a fake porch added over the front door, dark wood-framed windows had been added with leaded diamond glass which looked utterly ridiculous, and made it stand out from the other houses nearby. Really pretentious and nothing like the plain, honest house I knew.
There was my bedroom (now with smaller windows), there was the small side door porch I slept in one night because I'd come home too late and didn't have a key. The small side-garden had been built over and I wondered how long the bush I'd planted there as a child had lasted.
What was a garden in front of it with a really nice almond blossom tree had been paved over, and a wreck of a car was sitting on it.

Everything was still there but heavily disguised, and it was horrible.
I sat in the car looking at it from a hundred feet or so away and just cried as all the memories overwhelmed me.

I won't be going back any time soon. It was just too uncomfortable.

I'd be afraid to go back and visit the first house that I lived in. There are too many bad memories that happened there. I wouldn't mind going back to visit the second house that I lived in. I have pleasant memories of watching Donovan Bailey win all those gold medals for Canada in the TV room downstairs.

I have good and bad memories in both houses. I'm not sure I'd want to go inside.

I so hate the idea of significant places changing without my knowledge that I have never entirely moved out of my childhood home. I can pack a suitcase and be there to protect it in 30 minutes. However, I haven't been able to protect my schools, two of which have been significantly altered and one torn down. I am happy to have had the opportunity to visit the torn down school a couple of years before its demise and found it very little changed (which is probably what doomed it).

I have nightmares about one of my old houses. I never want to go there again, not even to see it from the outside.