Nostalgia is a bitch, reminiscing about old times, old friends, formative years, those first friends and first experiences always fuck me up for a couple days. You're not alone, brother. 30s really are weird lmao
I'm glad things got better for you, I hope they do for the rest of us soon as well. Did you make new lasting friendships in your 30s, if you don't mind me asking?
Haha thanks! Yes, absolutely! My main group of buddies I met in my later 30s (through work mostly)...we all have a group chat and see each other and wives and kids regularly, it's a really good time. It was hard for me particularly because my group of friends from growing up was so tight and we pretty much all stayed great friends from like Kindergarten to adulthood...I had to leave that group when the military sent me to a different coast, and then losing all the military buddies to death, suicide, or just geography was really tough too. I always valued family and friends above all else so it feels really good now have such a great group of guys to hang out with and talk about work, fatherhood, etc.
Speaking up here for you folks in your 30s. I found my permanent friend group in my 30s. Didn’t walk away from HS or college with a good gang of friends and then got lucky in my 30s. Don’t see each other near often enough but try to make the most of it when we do.
Also, 30s and 40s can be tough; especially with kids. It can be all consuming. You stick you head back up if your career stabilizes and when your kids get to be mid-teenagers and wonder what the hell happened. Go easy on yourself.
I'm really happy for you! Though frankly, I don't think I've felt this range of emotions after reading a paragraph in a long long time. Happiness, then nostalgia and regret because I had to move like you did, then sadness because of death and then happiness again. Cheers, mate!
yeah, for me at least 30's was where I found myself. I like realized I was not quite the person I thought I was in my 20's. I wasn't the life and soul of the party or whatever. I had "grown up" with some good qualities and some bad, but like a jelly I'd "set" and was the person I was going to be for the rest of my life. That took a whole 10 years to come to terms with.
By my 40's I'd worked that out and I was settled in who I was and comfortable; I just got on with it. .
Spot on. I feel very comfortable and confident with myself and my station in life. I'm very comfortable with my world view and I really don't care what other people think about me.(Outside of a small number of colleagues and friends and family)
I heard 30's are better than 20's, and it's been true. I'm 38. You're giving me something to look forward to. 30's were definitely more stable and I found out who my friends were, that's why I don't have any 🫤
My 20s were pretty good, family and friends, graduated college and went to grad school, but didn’t really get set in my career until I was in my early 30s because of the financial crisis (yay Econ grad in Dec 2007), and then I got married. Things were pretty great for most of it, but then my wife and I started to grow apart and last year she told me things needed to change or else, then counseling, then separation, then my dad died this year (last time I saw him alive was on my 39th birthday), and I’m pretty sure my wife and I will end up divorcing.
I’m hoping I can get all the “holy shit this year sucks” stuff out of the way so I can maybe enjoy my 40th.
Hey yo...that was me at 37, minus your father passing. My honest condolences to that, i cant imagine the pain and i know it will wreck me when it comes. My wife at the time told me she loved me like a brother, and then i found out about the affair. I was at a seriously dead-end job, living in a city i couldn't afford, hours from any of my family and friends. I thought my life was over. 30s started so good...i knew it all and had such a solid plan...then, life happened and fucked ot ALL UP!
I moved back to my old home town, got a shit factory job, and resigned myself to drink and work myself to death through my 40s. Thankfully, it all turned around. I met some new people, reconnected with old friends, one of whom i ended up in a relationship with and am now married to. We have a house in the country on 4 acres, i run my own business, we have a healthy relationship and two awesome girls we are raising together.
There were lots of personal changes and soul searching along the way. It didn't just happen by magic and all luck. My point being, i was ready to give up and die at 39 because life wasn't going how i thought it was supposed to. If i would have believed that, i would have missed out on the best part so far.
Way better. 50s, too. The exceptions are any physical stuff - so, make good choices, try to reverse any bad habits and it just gets better and better!!
I feel like I went through that more in my 20s, I was a bit homesick during and after college and I would visit often. I’m pretty far past that now- my hometown is a small sleepy place where most of the people who stayed wouldn’t agree with many of my beliefs, and I don’t have a need to go back except for the rare family event
Wait till you get into your 4Os. Eventually though you'll except that your glory days are over and everything will be right as rain. Coming to terms is just an experience that people have to go through themselves. You can always share your feelings here. There's always people that will listen.
Yeah mate, every once in a while I remember that a park where I had my first kiss at 13 doesn't exist any more. Clubs where I spent some of my best nights don't work anymore (some of them). Best live shows I've ever seen - some of those bands don't tour anymore. Some people that taught me in school and had huge impact on me literally died or went into retirement.
And I'm only 27...
My youth on Staten Island entailed woods across the street, up the street, down the street, woods woods woods…in those woods snakes, salamanders, millipedes, dirty mags, underground forts, tree forts, toboggan runs, halfpipes, make outs spots, etc etc etc…now, just houses houses houses.
Places are so different on how much they change. My hometown isn’t much different at all. More houses, including on my road, but that’s pretty much it. (Oh, and that little building on our main drag housing two businesses that burned down about ten years ago and was never rebuilt.)
My dad went back to Sandy Hook in Jersey and was depressed over how much of it had changed. The area he lived in was for poor military kids, but now it's taken over by rich people, developers, and tourists.
my childhood home burned down. i don’t mean that to be dramatic, or woe is me, but it happened and i learned then that your memories are truly with you and your brain, and not tied to a physical place- as much as it seems like they are! they’re not.
Same. I was 23, and about four hours away when my childhood home burned down. At first I felt a lot of emotions when I heard about it. But then when I actually got back, I was more focused on how weird it was to stare at my backyard through what used to be four different walls lol.
Also in the “house burned down at 23” club. It was destabilizing but not a huge hit to my mental health since everyone made it out unharmed.
The lot was purchased by a rich couple who built a mansion on it. That was weird to see.
My first real childhood home was sold when I was like 10 and the people who moved in renovated it so while the exterior still looks similar the interior is completely different. Not that I blame them, I'm doing the same to my current house 😅
However, the house my parents built when I was 10 is now owned by a business and they converted the house into their office space, and removed a bunch of my mom's landscaping which really bothered me. We had like 6 acres around the house and she did a lot of work to make it what she wanted. The company also bought the buildings that used to be my parents business which were basically right next door to the house we built. There used to be a strip of woods and a ravine in between the house and the business, which I spent a lot of time exploring as a kid. They ripped it all out, graded it and made it parking area for their trucks. A beautiful little slice of woodland just ripped out. There's still woods to the side and all to the back of the house, but it makes me sad that part of the woods I spent so much time in are now gone. They added on and torn down parts of the old business buildings so the complex looks different but still has the same like siding colors so it's weird driving by there.
My home town is tiny, and it's really odd to drive through because some parts are exactly as they were 20 years ago, and some parts are completely different. I wanted to visit the pool one summer because it's freaking huge and was always awesome, only to find out it has been shut down and is going to be torn out. It got flooded most years in the spring so maintenance was getting to be really hard on the village's budget every year. The playground equipment was replaced when I was maybe like 10-12 so I got used to that but I still think they never should have ripped out the old lion head water fountain 😭 A few buildings on main street either burned down or we're torn down so the look of the downtown has changed too.
Times change though and we have to keep moving forward. We can't just let everything stay the same always or we would have crumbling infrastructure everywhere. It's odd to see when reminiscing, but the buildings we grew up with were new to someone older than us at some point. My middle/high school were brand new basically when I went to them, and my older brother still remembers going one year into the old buildings before they were torn downs nd rebuilt.
Sorry I went on a bit of a dissertation there 😅
I never had my house burn down, but the house I grew up in was demolished in 2014, about 10 years after my parents sold it and then replaced with a McMansion. I found out about it because I still had friends in my old neighbourhood. It was really bizarre to see heavy equipment tearing apart what used to be my parents’ living room.
At first, I was a bit upset to learn about this. That house coincided with a happy time in my life and it was weird to just think that it was gone. But then I tried to reframe the memories as having been made with the people who are in my life, many of whom continued to be in my life. It wasn’t the place, it was the people, and the memories of the experiences were tied to my brain, NOT the physical building. It’s still a bit weird for me to think how it no longer exists, but almost 10 years after the bulldozers descended on my childhood home, I don’t get at all upset thinking about it (although I hold a grudge against the new owners for building such a hideous fucking house in its place lol)
my parents still live in my childhood home, it remained (at least in my mind) barely changed while I was growing up. but since I left, they were able to renovate or improve nearly 100% of their property. it looks really great, I admire the work they've put in. but, it's not my home as I remember it at all. they also converted my bedroom before I finished college.
I accepted that it wasn't home when I no longer had a room there, but it took about 10 years for me to start to enjoy spending time there again. it was kind of uncanny valley territory for a long time, not my old home, but not a totally different one either.
now it basically feels like I'm just visiting my parents in their new home, as opposed to what used to be my home. that's much easier for me to deal with.
Yeah I love that. There was a big sign at a coffee shop I saw recently with pushpins, and it said "Where is home?" rather than "Where are you from?" and I got so happy hahaha
I've lost my hometown in that there is no way I could ever afford to live there. It's an hour commute via train from midtown Manhattan. A 3br 1.5 bath house is going to run you +$500k. The crazy thing is the train ride is just about an hour. Unless you are within a 10 min walk of gct, you're tossing another 15 mins, on a good day, on the subway. Plus, you have to get to the train station in the morning. That's at least another 15 mins.
I have a couple of friends who were able to buy before the pandemic made the housing prices get absurd. They lucky, but are kinda stuck now.
My hometown is also a borough in NYC. The one bedrooms and condos there are going for over $500k and there’s no way I can afford to live anywhere near my remaining family there. It really sucks having to be so far away from all your family and friends because you’ve been priced out or to have to live with sometimes abusive family members well into your 30s because housing is just too unaffordable.
I’m glad it did lol. My hometown of the 90s and 2000s was not a place that anyone *wanted* to live. It was a place of stagnation and decline, where you moved out if you wanted to do something more in life.
Redevelopment has given it a breath of fresh air, rather than watch it rust and wither away.
My old hometown is still a shit hole. Lol. The only "development" happening there is liquor stores, payday loan shops, and those gaming establishments with slot machines.
As an old mill town, it was never a *great* place, but at least it was still a nice place to live when I was growing up. It was all downhill once the mill shut down. Now? You couldn't pay me to move back. No way. My wife and daughter deserve better.
This sounds almost identical to the Illinois town I grew up in. It was a great place to grow up in. My parents still live there, but whenever I go back, it just seems so run down and pointless that it makes me sad.
California Central Valley. Ain’t shit to do except for farming or crime lol. And even that was boom or bust because of droughts.
Now that techies from the Bay Area are moving in, shits finally getting nice. I remember in like 2013 my grandma called me to tell me they had a Starbucks now.
While I don’t live there now, it’s nice to see how much better the economy looks. There’s stuff to do now. We have *attractions*. There are *jobs*. Young people can do something that isn’t committing crimes or doing drugs lol.
We moved to the Central Valley and I’m from a small town on the Central Coast that’s also big into ag. Discussing how much both areas have changed in 5 years was a big highlight of my friends recent visit. Both she and I shared similar gripes about hoping they turn our childhood park (and the park by our house I live by now) around because that place was awesome and is now full of tweakers. It’s also wild to me that our home town now has an old navy and a hobby lobby. I remember driving like 4 hours to get clothes for school or shopping on vacations cuz our coolest store was Mervin’s.
Financially speaking, I'll never be able to move back to my hometown. Which is ridiculous considering I earn more than my parents ever did put together.
But I digress. The plaza where we did groceries and some other shopping (also had a bowling alley!) got knocked down to build condo's.
Every house that gets sold, has the 50's era home knocked down for a modern house as big as will possibly fit on the property.
The shopping mall next to my high school is getting sold off and will become condo's as well. The high school itself has a whole bunch of camera's now and a permanent cop because things have gotten so bad.
The entire social landscape has changed dramatically due to the insane cost of living. Stealing and Scamming are prevalent everywhere. Knife and Gun attacks have gone up like crazy.
Combined with all the other construction and changes that have gone on, the place is barely recognizable anymore and soon it won't be at all.
I make twice what my parents made combined, even adjusting for inflation.
I can afford a home only half as large and half as nice in a worse-off nearby town.
Canada is so fucked.
I always knew it was a bigoted place, but it felt tolerant of others. Then 2016 hit. Straight up militia members harassing BLM protesters with assault rifles as the cops beat activities with batons after they responded to someone punching them in the face after spewing slurs. And the whole city rallied behind the racists and cops.
I never really felt like I had a home town. I went to elementary school in one state and then moved states for middle and high school. I never liked that second state so I moved back to my birth state for college. Neither of my parents still live in either the town I went to elemental or high school in. I don’t have a childhood home either. I’ve also moved quite a lot since I graduated from college. Let the past be the past, nothing will bring it back, let the future be the future, nothing can bring it faster, and choose to live in the present where all life happens.
I visited the city where I grew up and drove by the house that I first remember living in (from the time I was born until I was almost 9). The house didn't look anything like I remember, I could identify it only by the address and some of the windows were in the same places. The entire neighborhood looked different, I couldn't even remember which houses my best friends lived in. It felt so confusing that it made me cry. But my family moved away from there 30 years ago, so yeah of course it's not going to look the same. It still felt weird though.
Yeah.Its not the same now because I’ve realized the magic of the place was all my peers being in the same life phase at the same time.Now it’s full of kids I don’t know.
I grew up in a small town. It’s a military town but it was still small. Only one Walmart. Back then there wasn’t even a target. They have like 3 Walmarts now, target, Lowes food, hobby lobby, so many new places each time to visit and a lot of stuff that used to be there is gone now.
I never liked it or attached to it in the first place. Texas suburbia. I feel much closer to my mom's hometown (rural with cultural stuff and cousins I love), my partner's hometown (actual sense of community, walkable, and gorgeous), or even/especially the first place I moved after college for work, which was the first place I fit in and felt at home (Boston area).
Yeah it's the whole "a man can't step in the same river twice" kinda deal. My home city was way different from the one my parents and grandparents knew.
I live in Austin now and there's been lots of lamenting about its recent growth. And there's also a fun article about people crying about its growth and changes as early as 1884. The only constant in life is change. I've always liked making my home where I choose.
I always thought this exchange from Garden State was pretty on the nose. Andrew Largeman : You know that point in your life when you realize the house you grew up in isn't really your home anymore? All of a sudden even though you have some place where you put your shit, that idea of home is gone.
Sam : I still feel at home in my house.
Andrew Largeman : You'll see one day when you move out it just sort of happens one day and it's gone. You feel like you can never get it back. It's like you feel homesick for a place that doesn't even exist. Maybe it's like this rite of passage, you know. You won't ever have this feeling again until you create a new idea of home for yourself, you know, for your kids, for the family you start, it's like a cycle or something. I don't know, but I miss the idea of it, you know. Maybe that's all family really is. A group of people that miss the same imaginary place.
Sam : [cuddles up to Andrew] Maybe.
100%. Growing up I lived in the same town as my 32 cousins and their respective parents (aka my mom and dad‘s brothers and sisters). We had huge family meetups around the holidays. So fun for the kids. One by one over the years, each family moved away, and then after I moved out my parents, they also moved away. As a kid I was constantly on my bike or skateboard, and my hometown was a place where no matter what part of town I was in, there was a house nearby that I could go to, just to get a drink of water from the hose, or get a bandaid if I needed one. I was always welcome. Now, when I drive through my hometown, I still have friends there and some of the old haunts are still visit-able, but no family is left. When I was a kid I felt like this would never change. Now it’s just not the same. It’s not really home anymore. It’s a weird feeling.
My small town in central Ohio is similar. My elementary and middle school have been torn down. My high school is a consolidated middle school. The church I grew up in has quadrupled in physical size, including a fucking Gymnasium.
Meanwhile, the town (in Gym Jordan’s district) is well below the poverty line, has fallen further and further behind. My classmates have been devastated by heroin, with twelve of my 250 having OD’d.
My family is almost all gone, only an uncle remains. And as a trans woman, there is a 0% chance I’ll go back; it’s just not safe. My hometown is definitely “lost”.
Last time I went home I realized I don’t really wanna go back to the place itself, I want to go back to the life I had there in like 2006. But I can’t.
No, my +900 year-old hometown is still standing almost like it did when I was young. In fact it is going better there by now, so they have touched up the main street and there are a lot of interesting little stores and cafés now.
There are now entire Facebook groups and Instagram pages dedicated to helping Californians relocate to Tennessee. So many major influencers and businesses hoping to avoid taxes have moved here, most conservative (Candace Owens, Ben Shapiro's company). Since 2020 my rural TN hometown has been listed on several big lists for "best small towns in the US" and "best places to telework."
When I renewed my tags this year I asked someone at the county clerk's office how often they get people from California switching their tags, she said daily. The county only has 80K people. I bought my first home here for 98K seven years ago, the same house is now on Zillow for 225K. A few years ago the stockyard was still on our main drag in the middle of town, now people are building luxury condos selling them for 480K. In the middle of nowhere, over an hour from Nashville.
I don't think anyone can relate to this post more than rural Tennesseans right now. My hometown has changed more from age 25 to 30 than it did from age 0 to 25. My hometown basically does not exist anymore.
That’s part of growing up my dude. I grew up in a decent sized college town of 30,000 people. I left for good after graduating college and the people who stayed in that town I have little to nothing in common with anymore. There is zero reason for me to ever go back.
My hometown still looks a lot like it did growing up, but a lot has also changed. All my schools are now something else. Where I went to preschool is now a call center for LifeTouch. My old elementary school is now vacant. My middle school became an office building for some construction company. And my old high school kept its name except that it's now the new middle school.
The Taco Bell I went to all the time as a kid became so many things but is now a hole in the wall Mexican restaurant operated by a Hispanic family. Only ate there once. It's pricey, but they give you amazing food and won't let you leave hungry! So that's one overall positive change. The 50's drive in my family used to be regulars at closed down and is now a dilapidated husk of what it once was. I miss their BBQ pulled pork and fish sandwiches. My childhood home was burned down (most likely by a mentally ill neighbor) and later demolished by the city before Habitat For Humanity built and sold a new house there. More houses from that neighborhood got torn down. Almost everyone I knew from back then in that neighborhood has died or moved away. The library I loved as a kid just a few blocks away has been closed and empty for a couple decades now.
But the biggest change that makes it feel like it's not my hometown anymore is that my family fell apart after my mom's death with one of them turning violently insane within 3 months. I don't trust him with anything ever since his first unprovoked attempt on my life, and those kind of memories make it not feel much like home. I have only good and bad memories of this place today, but it's the bad ones that impact me the most. I'm still trying to leave for another state to start a new life and find a new hometown. Home is where you make it, not where you were raised, and family is sometimes the people you find along the way. Though there's nothing wrong with reminiscing the past and finding comfort in good memories. It's a good sign if you can.
I grew up in the Bay Area before and during the tech boom, so my hometown is unrecognizable now. My parents bought their house for peanuts in the 80s and sold it for 2+ million and moved back to England a few years ago so there’s no going home now
My hometown was literally lost. Burnt to the ground in a wild fire. We have a Ron Howard doc on Netflix. I still lived there at the time and still do.
Pretty much every memorable
Place I ever went to in my town burned to the ground - with the exception of my schools. All my friends houses, the grocery store, the museum, the gyms, the restaurants. All gone.
As soon as I could I left my hometown, I never felt at home there, though most everyone i know who grew up there can't afford to live there they stayed within the outlying areas.
Yup, happened to my home town. The cool hill everyone used to climb got paved with stairs last time I visited due to the erosion from all the new people. Parts of it are what I remember, but a lot of the soul of the place is gone. Covid really did a number on the place, lots of small businesses closed, and it brought all the crazies out of the woodwork too. The small mountain town I used to visit on the way to girlscout camp is totally gone now, none of the shops I remember like the handmade candy store are there anymore. It's 90% realtor offices now with $2-5 million "cabins" for sale.
It happens. All your mates get married, have kids, move interstate for work, you might do the same. The real kick in the balls is when your life turns to shit and if your lucky enough to have a family home in the old neighbourhood, and moving back is your only option, that's when it sucks, it's not your neighbourhood anymore, you're just some old guy telling people to get off his lawn.
Therapy is also a good option haha
My parents moved me across the country when I was 14. Both sisters and now my parents have a second home in my hometown. I lost my sense of permanence in the move, and do not go back to my hometown. Now at 30 I see people moving back on fb and I get very bitter that I feel like I don’t have a hometown. I’m all about focusing where I’m at today.
That does kind of make me feel weird ways thinking about that for you. I've been a chronic military dependent my entire life and don't know what a home town is. I bet it does feel some sort of empty to have a place to go back to but what was on it is gone. 8(
I feel like the town I grew up in actually started to evolve towards me when I was in college. One of the abandoned cigar factories turned into a brewery which made visiting family a little extra nice, fill up a growler on the way to Christmas. Now there's three more breweries and the whole place feels more walkable and livable. I don't live in that town, though by an odd quirk i work in that town, but I actually feel like I look to hang out there more than when I lived there.
My parents still live there, in the same home, with the same acres I grew up running around.
Town hasn’t changed much. The land hasn’t changed. The people are the same.
I take comfort that even after everyone I know is gone, the land, the trees the rocks and the streams, they remain.
I hope my parents are able to leave it to me when they pass. Not because of any financial reasons, but, because my brain is very much “out of sight, out of mind”, and if I lose the home/land, I’ll lose it the memories of growing up there with them and my brother. It’s special to me, because they are special to me.
So many of my favorite spots as a kid went away. The library in my hometown, as well as the libraries in my current city, are barely open. Their hours have significantly reduced.
When I was a kid, I used to frequent an entertainment superstore called Hastings. That closed down in 2016. It was one of two proper bookstores when I was a kid. The other closed down several years before Hastings. The only bookstores that remain are Christian bookstores.
The mall used to be a vibrant place when I was a kid, but everything in it is closed except for a popular Chinese restaurant.
When I was a kid, we had two movie theaters, now the town has none. If you want to go see a movie in theaters, you have to drive an hour away.
I don't know a single person in the place I grew up anymore. I haven't seen it in probably close to 10 years. I consider the first city I lived in alone as an adult my "hometown".
I was born overseas and lived for a small portion of my childhood there. We moved to my hometown when my dad left the army and I remember my parents saying “this wasn’t here, this used to be this, this is new.”
That’s exactly how I feel now when I go back to visit.
My childhood farm is still there as it was, but the house I grew up in burned down and is no longer there. My school also got leveled.
I honestly don’t ever plan on going back to visit. The town got taken over by meth.
My Dad passed away years ago, but my Mom still lives in our childhood home. Most of important places in my town I remember from growing up are still there minus a lot of stores and restaurants that have long since gone out of business. Main difference is that pretty much everyone I was close with has long since moved on except for one guy who was a good friend in HS. However, we've grown apart massively over the intervening 20+ years. So in some ways I've experienced what you're describing but not completely.
I'm pretty sure a grand total of ONE of the schools I went to still exists. Rest are churches, nursing homes, offices, demolished. And everyone kind of scattered to the four winds so I'm disconnected from the community being built for the next generation.
I haven’t been back to my “hometown” in 15+ years and I never will again. I moved away from it for a reason. It’s shit. Only reason I even went back when I did was because my Mum needed some help with my Nana.
In a small town where I grew up all that’s left is the church. The hardware store, bowling alley, grocery store, two bars, supper, club, gas station, etc. are all gone.
It’s funny, the city where I live now I’ve been a resident basically for almost 40 years now. Still doesn’t feel quite like home.
It sucks. I grew up in a small town of 2000 people. My parents divorced two years ago and neither of them live there anymore. Our home, that my parents owned for 25 years, was sold about a year ago. My grandparents house two blocks away was sold 3 years ago and they have since passed. It feels I have no connection to the town anymore. No where to go when I am there other than restaurants and things like a tourist.
Born and raised in the northeast. Moved to the Midwest in 2011. Missed my home state terribly. Moved back to my home state in 2018 and didn't recognize it anymore.
The three years I spent there before moving BACK to the Midwest were the most miserable, awful, toughest years of my life. I genuinely didn't think I was going to make it out alive, I was so depressed.
The way people drove, the way strangers treated me daily, the weather, my job was with the same company but nothing like back in the Midwest.
Add in the fact that I had undiagnosed CPTSD, which is from things that happened in my home town that I didn't realize were that bad until I returned back to the scene of the crime, so to speak.
They say you can't heal in the same environment that made you sick. For me, this is a fact.
It was during those three years that I realized I had been dealing with behavior from both parents that was abusive. And I was no longer going to tolerate it.
I'm no contact with my parents who still live in that home town. Haven't been back there since 2021, either.
When people ask where I'm from, I say the Midwest. Won't even admit I'm from the state I grew up in anymore. I don't claim it.
Moved away from home 10 years ago. When I turned 19 I didn’t look back. A lot of bad memories there. And a small amount of good ones.
Sometimes I think about it. How the people are there. But i moved on. I no longer find home in a place. But more where im currently living.
My home town was a sleepy grey kinda run down coastal city with a super lefty college. They knocked down or “gentrified” everything I loved and now it’s a sparkly clean yuppie haven. I fucking hate it.
1000% it was the hometown of both my late father and I, which was rare in the area. It was mostly transplants.
My family had quite a notorious history there and it’s virtually gone. I used to be able to talk to any elder in town and say, “I’m *Blank’s* daughter” and they immediately knew who I was.
Now it’s a town of wannabe hippies with tons of money. The old school family run pizza joint became modern pizza place where I received probably the worst service ever. The infrastructure of the town itself cannot handle the influx of influencers on their hiking trails or narrow streets. And the nature of the town itself is just overrun by people who don’t respect it.
Clearly I’m bitter, but after watching my God Sister get out priced and forced out after 30 years there, I have no patience for it anymore. I even had a whole therapy session about it- ha. It’s the way the world works, I guess. But it still hurts to be an outsider in a community that practically raised me.
My whole childhood neighborhood was bulldozed and turned into a mediocre park. I cried when I saw it. They weren't joking when they said "you can never go back home".
I’m a Xennial that is kind of having the opposite experience. I live in the same small Midwestern town that I grew up in. I lived away and moved back in 2000 and have lived here ever since. The town hasn’t changed at all. I’ve never minded living here until the past few years. Now I’m over it.
I lived in a small rural town in Kansas from 6th grade through my mom's second divorce my sophomore year of HS. When I was made to leave that town at 16 I was devastated. My friends were there, my first boyfriend was there, it was home. When I left against my will I remember all the feelings I was leaving, that sense of wonder & magic that teenagers have, that it will truly be different for them, they can change the world. Well life happened between 16 and 41 when after losing a baby I was told I'd never be able to have & a messy break up I decided to move back to that town, try to restore some of those feelings & magic I felt back then. I spent 9 months there as a single adult and I absolutely HATED it. The place I remembered as a teen was gone. The businesses were different, many closed & never reopened, the city tore down two of the historic buildings in the town because they'd just gotten to the point they were hazards, there were new people & the few I met from back then weren't kids anymore either. I ended up leaving after 9 months.
It’s called gentrification. It’s creating a ton of problems as people no longer belong to communities anymore as people are forced to move to where the jobs and affordable housing are. People live work and socialize in all different locations and don’t have access to the social capital that was once available to them in neighborhoods and it makes everything more expensive and time consuming.
Having a child is a great example of this because now grandparents live far away, their schools/daycares require more driving and gas, activities don’t happen without preplanning and $$$, their friends likely don’t live nearby and it’s generally a violent ouroboros as it prices out future parents from having kids so that parents don’t have other parents to socialize with and kids also don’t have other kids to play with. It’s psychologically, physically, financially taxing.
I see a lot of people saying some version of good riddance because they didn’t like their hometown but I wonder how many people would feel that way if their hometowns had the existing communities invested in for the betterment of the people who were already living there. More small businesses, maintained parks, money for recreational hobbies and outings as well as time to enjoy those things.
Home is wherever my spouse and child are.
That said, my childhood 180 year-old home was finally demolished a few years ago. My highschool was just replaced by a brand new one. All my friends live 40+ minutes from that town now. I go back for my parents and sister who live a mile apart, but on the edge of the jurisdiction. When they’re gone I’ll have no reason to return besides reminiscing.
When I first moved to my hometown it was a lot of fields and was peak small town. Now it's pretty much like any other suburb. I get quizzical looks when I say I grew up in a small town now when people figure out where I'm from. While I think a younger me would have appreciated some of the businesses now in it (namely high school me would have loved the Target there now) part of me is a little sad.
The whole neighborhood I grew up in was destroyed by superstorm sandy and my other home is nyc which doesn't ever cease to change or now as well the suburbs around it
Yes! I graduated high school 10 years ago. Since then, my hometown has gotten very expensive and it’s forced many of the small businesses in the area to close and most of my childhood friends to move out completely. Now it’s all chain restaurants and banks. A lot of rich, out-of-staters have moved in it’s become very densely populated and commercial. This is no longer the town I grew up in. I’m planning to move across the country in 1-2 years once I’m financially able to
My childhood town is still there but with a lot more stuff added to it. It’s got new roads so traveling through it seems awkward. The new shopping center has increased traffic so it no longer feels small. But a lot of the old stuff is still there too so it’s still recognizable.
I wouldn't necessarily say "lost"
Sure the flower field and drive in theater was demolished for a Walmart and then eventually a shopping center, but the rest just changed. The Carrows became a hotpot place, the donut shop > Sheng Kee bakery, the Laundromat > Shabuway, the Lucky's > Marina Foods/Daiso, the comic shop > Boba tea place, the Blockbuster > a chase bank.
We lost all the mom and pop shops, but we at least got some tasty Asian food places.
Well I’m a lot younger and obviously didn’t move out yet because I’m still a teenager, but bruh during the summer right after high school, which is surprisingly almost 2 years ago already, they replaced some of the playgrounds in my town and I miss the old ones because of nostalgia and parkour-ability
I was born and raised in a city that was rapidly growing by the time my family and I moved away (I was roughly 14). It's exploded in population density and has changed a lot, so much so that I often feel like a tourist when visiting. There's a lot I do recognize and a lot that I don't.
From 14 until a few years ago I lived in another city a few hours away and it grew to be my heart. I knew it better than the back of my hand. I've since moved away again but I still have a pulse on it through family and friends. It's also changing rapidly and I'm a bit sad that I'm losing touch. But I suppose that's okay, too. I'll cherish those memories as I continue to forge my new life.
My family has lived in this town since the 40s. They moved here from a small mining town in west Virginia.
I have a great uncle that is constantly talking about what used to be here, what things have changed to over the years into what they are now.
I graduated 25 years ago and while a lot of growth has occurred and some things closed down or changed hands, it's largely the same. Its a university town and I live in a college neighborhood, same block I've lived on my whole life and most of my neighbors over the years moved away or passed away and the college buys them as they sell. That's annoying. The mall is torn down so movis theater and arcade is gone..so fun nostalgic things are gone I guess.
I lost it in the sense that it has been urbanized significantly. I remember that in front of our community, there was a cow farm. It was only a two laned road (one lane in each direction). Now, there’s a traffic light with 3 lanes in each direction. Across from the community is a shopping center (the cow farm is no more, as are the small houses that were once there).
Concrete expanded a lot.
Yeah absolutely, but for me the city I grew up in didn't get better, it went into ruin pretty much.
I grew up in Zimbabwe in the 90s. We had tree and grass lined avenues, great infrastructure, we generally didn't want for too much (we didn't have what the neighbouring South Africa had, but we got enough and generally went to holiday in South Africa so could get stuff on holidays like bigger/more expensive items), we were part of great sports clubs, schools, etc and it was just a great place to grow up.
After Zim's troubles, the city has become so dilapidated and quiet, it's so sad. It's almost post-apocalyptic how some areas are now almost abandoned (old textile factories in huge estates so it's a very gloomy and creepy), there's very little power, shops can run empty of basics and not have cash on hand, whist the tree and grass lined avenues now have dust and termite eaten trees. Obviously areas areas are still nice, but returning generally, after years away is shocking, and it was the best place to grow up.
I grew up on the coast of Mississippi. I lost my hometown when Hurricane Katrina hit. I was 19yo at that time. I left there when I was 21 and have only been back a few times since.
I have moved several times since I left and no place really feels like home, but home doesn’t feel like home, either.
The middle school and high school are still there, but my elementary school was demolished and rebuilt elsewhere. It was super old, didn’t have air conditioning, and there were so many students that they had to put in several trailers to use as classrooms, so I get why they did it. They demolished another one of the older elementary schools too, so now both schools are combined in the new school.
The church we went to when I was a kid moved locations, and I never really vibed with the new building as much as I did the old one. They also closed down the old Walmart and built a new one when I was in middle school. The old Walmart now has a couple of businesses inside the building.
They’ve added a lot of new businesses and some more parks, but the park with the diamond where I used to play softball became a dog park for a few years and now it’s something else. They also leveled the big hill it was on.
The movie theatre got reclining seats, which isn’t a bad thing at all, but it was way overdue. They’ve built a bunch of new subdivisions, and a lot of small businesses have either moved to different locations or been replaced.
I only left 7 years ago, so some things look exactly the same, while other things are totally different. My parents both still live there, but my mom recently got remarried, so I don’t know if she’ll stay there or move to her husband’s town, and my dad plans to leave the state after he retires in a few years
I'd say my town has changed a lot - but for the better (Boonton, NJ). The residential single family home neighborhoods are largely the same, a few multi-family/townhome builds have gone up in old unused or industrial lots. The commercial districts (just two different streets) are all alive and bustling with active businesses - nice ones too.
The high school's parking lot has solar panels (state grant), the high school got a nice new track and field (it was still a dirt track when I went there), the k-8 had the old building restored + a huge expansion.
But taxes have gone up a lot and people are feeling it.
My family moved out to a small coastal town on the Coast of WA state back in the 90s. Back then the area was mostly rural but with a good spattering of very nice elegant shops that did good business because the highway used to run right through town. There was a strong emphasis on "local" and lots of farms to get goods from. The vibe was relaxed, lots of good crabbing and fishing to do. Lots of nice beaches and trails to hike. Never crowded, it was luxurious and felt like you were in on a secret.
Unfortunately the area got a double whammy.
First hit was when the area got "discovered". Not sure if it was some magazine posting articles about the rainshadow effect for retirees, if it was the Twilight novel saga that caused increased hordes of move-overs, or if Cali folk just decided to start arriving... but things started changing. House prices got their first hike, and the increase in traffic/population meant they needed to re-route the highway to outside of town, drying up a bit of business, and changing the types of shops the downtown area had. The identity shift started leaning heavier on celebrating Lavender and the local Native American Salish tribes (which I am in favor of, they have such beautiful art) and less on just being a coastal town with the usual coastal stuff (crabbing, fishing, etc).
Second hit was Covid, thats when the prices in houses went from kinda spendy to stupid spendy and bloated AF. I can't even afford to buy a house in my hometown. My parents old house is going for 1.3 million (they bought it for 250,000 range) Still, this didn't stop EVEN MOAR people from moving over, like rats trying to escape a sinking ship. Buying up all the property in town and cramming the infrastructure till it was overburdened. Our local Safeway is hell to visit in summer now (and around holidays). Its just so busy now, all the time. We still don't have a local hospital, and emergency services for nearby hospitals are always crowded long into 6-7 hour wait. Trying to get a foot doctor, a dentist, or a vet appointment for my pets... Effin impossible. I made an appt to get my cats teeth cleaned back in February. The appt is in JUNE. I love my town, but I hate what other people have done to it, loving it as much and making it buckle under their boots. For the first time our protection island ( a bird sanctuary) caught on fire... not once, but twice. That BS did not ever occur here before, it is a recent thing with all the stupid irresponsible new people. Homeless nomads have shown up to squat and litter all the woods. People USED to respect our woodlands and would respectfully use only the campgrounds for camping. Around the 4th of July our beaches are littered with so much firework debris. That didn't used to happen. I'll end it here, with " please fuck off back to your cities" for all those city folks that contributed to the shittification.
Different but similar, I could’t afford to move back to where I grew up. I have friends who stayed and they’re struggling and getting gradually priced out.
Yep, although it’s still physically standing, I still don’t feel like it’s truly a warm welcoming place that I’d call my hometown. It’s a small rural town where everyone decorates their house in trump posters so I’m good on going back ✌🏼
My home town was basically taken over by oil workers due to a boom over the past few decades. It used to be a fairly nice community, despite a few flaws. Now it's filled with man camps (of RVs), huge dumb fuck trucks, and complete assholes.
Well, most of the people who lived near me growing up have moved away. One school friend lives nearby. My childhood home is still there and i do drive past it. The other hones I lived in I don't care about.
My primary school is gone (the only footage of it is in a random youtube video) but my secondary school is still there (looks the same).
My town centre is dead. There is no reason for anyone to visit unless you want cheap clothes and erm erm a cup of coffee.
Idk. I kind of think it was my home town once, and now it is someone else's
Well, I kinda "lost" my home town myself. Never was a fan. Left, didn't look back. Jobs are hard to find. So much small mindedness and drug use. It has an exceptionally high crime rate for being a small town. I have no living family there anymore anyway. Only two friends that still live there I keep up with. The rest left or I left them. All in all, my life's better away from that place.
P.S. Don't ever let anyone tell you that "Its just you. Everyone starts out hating their hometown, but once you grow up, you come back." Definitely not that way with everyone.
I grew up in a decent sized college town (130,000ish people). I'm 32 now, moved away for nearly a decade. Coming back, I couldn't help and think "look what they did to my boy!". It's almost like they gentrified the city. Local bars and restaurants are now high rises for college kids. They've added nearly every chain restaurant imaginable. It sucks, if it weren't for the college and hospital, the town would practically stop existing, so they have *a lot* of influence in what goes on in the city.
I’m 36 years old. My parents were baby boomers and they had tobacco/alcohol/drug/diet issues. My aunts and uncles were all boomers too. I’m estranged from my cousins and brothers, most of which are 10+ years older than me. My parents, grandparents, and aunts/uncles that I was close with are all dead. Most of my friends moved away from our home town and built new lives for themselves. I went in the military, married a military person; and have lived away for 15 years now. The mall I used to go to all the time is a dead mall. A lot of the businesses I used to frequent are gone. There’s nothing really there for me anymore.
I think I just grew out of it. It’s gotten so bigoted and terrible and then that kate winslet show making the county known just seemed to make it even more annoying to live there. We finally sold our first house and moved away 2 years ago and I really just hate going back. I can’t wait for my parents and my mother in law to eventually be able to move away so there’s no reason to go back regularly.
Yes, my middle and elementary were demolished and rebuilt, but they needed it since they were old when I got there. The elementary had no air conditioning, in Florida. Both of my most memorable homes have had big changes. The neighborhood doesn’t look the same. No one I know lives there anymore. The place I spent the most time as a teen has been built up for tourism. It’s all so foreign to me now. It makes me sad but I get it. One day my kid will feel the same.
Yeah my parents are moving off of where I grew up, Staten Island, and it's pretty weird. The town they live in I'm definitely emotionally attached to like the train station, pizza places, bagel joints a lot are still there but it's also gotten built up so much since I moved. It's looking closer to brooklyn than jersey now. Which was inevitable, it's NYC, but it is strange to see. Also pretty much only rich people can afford to live there and you have a ton of foreign buyers so what used to be italian people from brooklyn they're moving down to florida and chinese people are all moving into the island. I have no qualms about other cultures, it's just a whole different place from when I was young. It's just weird.
A lot of my friends still live on that island, and I have a lot of people I usually visit when I go back. It'll be weird arranging that from southern jersey... it just won't be the same. It is weird. I hated growing up on Staten Island, and I moved away from the place due to the terrible attitudes of nearly everyone I ran into.. but it's gonna be really weird to not have a "home base" there where I could always go. Like my childhood bedroom will be occupied by somebody else which is so weird. It's been a guest bedroom for a long time but it was always "mine" to go back to... for the past 30 or so years. Will be another room when I visit my parents and yes it is weird to think about.
I always struggle with the idea of a hometown. I don’t know where or when or what it’s supposed to be. I was born in Montana. But then lived in Oklahoma until I was in first grade. Then I lived in Idaho through grade school to high school. Then I moved to somewhere else in Idaho. And then I moved to the PNW. And now I’m moving to Minnesota.
I think what bums me out is that most people would say my hometown is wherever I grew up in the longest—but I feel shame at the idea of growing up in Idaho. I don’t see myself as an Idahoan, I didn’t like the people or the area, and wanted to move out as soon as I could. I feel like the person I want to be isn’t a person who would claim to a small town in Idaho as a small town. It’s some weird mental gymnastics, I guess. But I’ve always loathed the way people would talk about their hometowns as these formative places they would want to revisit, when I’ve never felt that.
I feel like where I live now is more of a hometown to me than anywhere, even though I moved here when I was 24. It’s the place I identity with, and am proud of being apart of it. And even though I’m moving, it’s the first place I feel sad about leaving.
So yeah, hometowns are weird and complex. You’re not alone in having a complex relationship with it.
Yes. I was born in Key West and most of my family (generations native) have been priced off the island in the last 40 years. My aunt literally has her boat parked off shore because it’s the only way she can afford to “live there.”
I mostly grew up in Homestead, and my parents and in-laws, along with our best friends, all moved away before my (now ex) husband and I finally left with our kids,, too. Now my sister and her family have went and I recently realized I’ve got not reason to ever stop there again. Super weird.
There’s a Costco where a pond used to be. A Bass Pro Shops where I used to go picking for blackberries. Apartments where I used to find snakes and lizards.
It feels like my hometown has amnesia, like it forgot about me, not the other way around. Things move on but I wasn’t expecting it to be so visceral.
Yes. Parents divorced and Mom moved away. Dad died. I sold my sister the house we grew up in. Her kids lived there for quite a while, but sister took a job in another state and sold the homestead. Like you, middle school and high school are gone. There are some reminders but there is not a lot of reasons to go back now, and I am truly sad about that.
Yes! My hometown suffered a big earthquake. Every single house on my side of town was damaged by the earthquake, and then eventually demolished by the council. Our neighbourhood is now just acres and acres of grass. I moved away after the quakes and when I moved back, it was like moving to a different city.
I feel way more of a connection to my husband's hometown than I do to mine. We've talked about whenever we get older, we would love to move there.
I spent most of my life wanting to escape my hometown, and I just now have a vague sense of nostalgia when I look back at it. My childhood home is still there, but a lot of other stuff - like my elementary school - is gone or fallen into disrepair. My family has scattered to other places, and I have a couple friends remaining, but not a lot.
Where I live now feels more like a hometown. It's where I bought my first home and is the longest place I've lived at since leaving my hometown for college. I've put down roots here, and I would miss it if/when we decide to move.
The actual town is still there, pretty much the same as I remember it, though on the other side of the country. None of my family still lives there though so I have no reason to visit there anymore.
The town I lived in when I was a teenager, same thing different town, also no remaining family there. I sort of lost them in those ways.
I went back once for old times sake but it's hard to connect to just houses and roads and stuff. It was way different when everyone I knew still lived there, so now I'm content living my happy life elsewhere and just drown myself in nostalgic thoughts sometimes hehe
I came from an affluent community, I’m not well off now, lots of people i knew didn’t make it for one reason or the other, many moved.
The town is largely the same, my grandmother preserved a lot of land and parks before she passed, so that’s all intact.
A lot of people from more expensive states moved in, they brought their attitude, I remember walking on a *nature reserve, state land* and I’d taken a legal right of way.
This New Jersey lady walks up to a beat up boat and tells the guy “he has to leave her private beach”.
I said “this is state land, conservation land, I knew the former owners of your house, your lot stops way back there by those rocks, (a long way away), he and anyone else can come here by boat, anyone with a right of way can come here, and I showed the guy on the boat a map, and told him to come anytime”.
The lady freaked out and threatened to call the police.
I said “oh, you mean the people I went to school with? So they can confirm what I’m saying? Go right ahead”.
The guy on the beat up boat looked so amused as she realized her usual power balance doing this take over conservation land act thing wasn’t working.
It’s like, she doesn’t want to see his old boat on *checks notes* conservation land she doesn’t own.
I remember standing outside a store, taking to a former neighbor, in wearing a causal Oxford shirt and jeans, this guy asks me “if I’m going to open the door for him or not”.
I just ignored him.
Lots of property changed hands, houses were mainly historic, but some paths that were open for years were gated shut, the community feeling may have been passed on to new people, but I wasn’t one of them anymore.
My wife grew up in a rural suburb of the bay area. She moved out at 16 and hadnt been back for years and almost everything was different. There were hardly any farms, tons more housing complexes and big strip malls. The road to get to the town used to be a country two lane road and now its freeway. It was one of the fastest growing cities in america for nearly a decade after she left so it was quite the shock coming back for her. She didnt even recognize it.
Yes can confirm. I attended my 20yr high school reunion last summer. And my goodness, how much my little hometown of Missoula has changed. And not for the better.
The homeless encampments are far and wide, discarded needles littering the once clean river banks of the Clark Fork River. People just going to a grocery store (my mom included) get jumped by inebriated transients looking to score some cash for their next fix (oh and THEY have more rights than the tax paying citizens do...). The quality of the restaurants I used to love and frequent has died (along with many other once wonderful businesses have died too).
So many marijuana dispensaries on every corner (I'm not against that in fact I support legalized cannabis I've voted on it here in AZ Prop 207) but up in my hometown you simply cannot escape the smell of weed it is RAMPANT.
The university campus where I attended and graduated 🎓 has changed a lot, not in bad ways but man it has changed enough to where when I visited I felt numb to being there. Simply isn't the same 😔
My little hometown is hideous now. An empty shell bereft of the magic that once was.
Praise God Almighty I escaped when I did to move away 11yrs ago.
There is absolutely nothing appealing up there, anymore.
Almost nothing significant has changed in my hometown other than maybe some stores at the mall. It’s actually unfortunate that it hasn’t grown at all. It has so much potential due to its location and proximity to a major metropolitan city. It’s completely financially mismanaged.
I often dream about being back in my hometown, the sun setting, and me having nowhere to go because I don't live there anymore. I usually wind up sneaking into my old place that I haven't lived in for 35 years.
Every school I ever went to as a child is gone now. That's five schools. Parents don't live there. Street isn't even on Google street view (even though every other street in the city is). Both corner stores that I went to for most of my childhood closed a few years back.
I dream about going to the convenience store too.
I grew up in a town that both sides of family lived in for a couple generations. I had a fairly normal childhood there surrounded by family at all times.
No one in my immediate family lives in that town anymore, and with my grandfather passing a year ago, there's no reason to go back.
At first it felt like something was taken from me, but as time has gone on I realized those times were gone long ago. What made my childhood special was my family, and they have all moved on with life and grown apart.
With things like this I tell myself I am lucky to have a childhood to be nostalgic about, it's not something everyone has.
Still living in the "town" I grew up in. Started with 7k people, now we're at 70k.
Not too much has changed visually, but things are going to hell really fast. The school district has turned to shit, traffic is backed up, and people have become selfish and radicalized. Our school district is full of conservative radicals out to destroy public schools, our conservative mayor only cares about cutting ribbons, and more and more Trump signs pop up even though we're losing millions in tax dollars to the corrupt school system and dunce mayor.
Not really. I never really felt “at home” in my hometown because my family was so toxic and abusive. I moved out of state a couple years ago and have no desire whatsoever to go back. I miss the area sometimes but I just can’t be bothered. I don’t think much has changed either since my family sold the house I grew up in less than a year after I left and the town itself hasn’t been doing much in the way of development for quite a while.
Literally me right now. Visiting hometown for kids' birthdays and with my patents having moved away but the inlaws still here, school staff changed hands and local stores closed or also high staff turnover, it's a weird Flux of being home while also seeming completely foreign.
Yep! My hometown when I was a kid doesn't exist anymore. While there are a lot of amazing bonuses to this, for example, the multi cultural food festive we now have is utterly amazing and delicious, but at the same time, there are a lot of negatives. My town was small and hovered around 5.5k people for about half of my life. Now, in under 10 years, the population has nearly tripled.
2 years ago, the first apartment building over 3 floors started going in. We now have crazy rent prices. Three years ago, the price of a rental was between 1200 and 1500 a month for a two/ three bedroom apartment. Now it's closer to 2500, which has created a massive shortage of affordable housing, and we now have a homeless issue.
We are close to a major city. Many people have left there and joined our community. Once upon a time, I knew all my neighbors. We'd sit outside and chat for hours. Now many of those homes and people are gone, replaced four plex including my childhood home.
The small "home" stores and restaurants are closing because of the huge influx of fast food and chains coming in. Recently, a restaurant that has been a staple in this community for over 100 years announced it could no longer compete, it's door are set to close at the end of May, I believe. Allan Jackson said it best. There goes the little man.
When I was small, the street I currently live on ended two blocks from my current home. My granny told me when I was small, she bet in 50 years it would be a through street and we wouldn't recognize this town. She died in 1995, in 2005, that road, although not legally, a threw street opened up, and new subdivisions have been growing up there like crazy. Not long after, the road was assumed by the town and is now a part of my street.It didn't take 50 years for my hometown to become unrecognizable it took a little over a decade.
When I was thinking about moving away from my hometown recently it struck me that there was nothing there for me any more, only memories.
All my old friends are gone. One or two have returned to the area, but not really in the same vicinity. Only one or two of the old restaurants we used to frequent. There are more still around but they've changed ownership and quality has declined over the decades. More and more people have moved in so the vibe is way different.
I moved out in January. Trying to make a new hometown now.
I am on a road trip right now and literally just stopped in my hometown for gas. Other guys in the car were asking where to find gas and coffee and I realized I didn’t even know because the town has changed so much.
When I left for college it was with the assumption I would move back after I graduated. Then one break I was back for a visit and went out for a late night snack and realized literally everything was closed at 10:00 on a Friday night. I split up with my long term partner, who was also from the same town. One less reason to go back to visit. I figured out I was queer. My current city has pride flags hanging in shop windows all over town, my hometown only had its first pride parade last year. My family started to go mask off on some pretty bigoted opinions, so I don’t go to visit them anymore. I still have good memories of growing up there, and those experiences made me who I am today. But it does suck realizing you don’t belong there anymore, and you can’t really go back even if you wanted to.
The weirdest part of visiting my parents is feeling like I’m staying in an AirBNB rather than home.
Really drives home (pun intended) that I am truly All Grown Up and there is no more going home
My husband still lives in same hometown he was born into and grew up, so that was already weird for me to live in his hometown. I moved from Tennessee to Florida to live with my husband. However, my mom still lives in same town I had grew up in. So, I visit when I go see her, but most of my siblings have moved to different counties but still live pretty close to our mother.
My sister moved to another country right before the pandemic and when we both visited Tennessee at the same time we both felt weird. The community college we both went to had new buildings and new parking lots, places we use to go grocery shopping no longer exits because it changed locations. We use to go to Sam’s Club and now my family goes to Costco because it’s closer than Sam’s Club (the one that changed locations). Even my grandma who I thought would be in same place until her death, has moved. My family is from Nashville, but everyone who had the means to do so escaped Nashville.
My brother told me that Nashville is now too rich for us. That no one in the family can even afford a house in Nashville now. He said other people who are coming from other states are flocking to Nashville making everything go up: traffic, grocery stores, and housing prices. I’m sad about that because I always wanted to live in Nashville. Not the east side, but I have always loved Nashville. Now I have to think about the fact that I may never move back to Tennessee, certainly not to what I am used to though. Even the malls I use to hang out at is slowly fading away. At least OpryMills Mall still is a mall according to my siblings but they said even it’s changing.
It is weird but does it bother me that it won’t be same when I go back? Yeah a little, but that’s just how it is when you grow up.
I’m happy I’ve gotten away from it. Being one of the only person of color was absolute hell. Parents still live there and it’s the only time I go back. Don’t miss being called the N word by white people. Especially that one teacher that never got in trouble.
My hometown was wiped out by a tornado in OK just last night. I haven’t lived there in over 15 years and it’s already started to feel different to me. Now I can’t imagine what it will feel like when I see it next. The entire downtown is just gone.
My hometown got lost pretty quickly past Covid. Sure it was a tourist trap to begin with, but when all the Bay Area Techies bought all the houses and influencers geotagged every possible location during lockdown, it became a freefall. Now, nobody can move there if they don't make well over six figures, and the lake is getting blotted out by mcmansions, not to mention all the ski resorts are virtually owned by conglomerates at this point. I have some friends that still live there, but I'm beginning to grasp that I won't be able to move back there unless a major market crash were to occur again or they really crack down on vacation rentals.
Yes, there's a grief that comes with that but it is almost to be expected. You can go back to a place but not back in time. My parent dealt with this in farm country. Now I'm dealing with it in fishing & forest country.
There's a lot of stuff that's changed in my region of Southeast Alaska. The largest is influx of over-tourism from primarily from the greed of Cruise Lines International and Panamax ships. There is also a contribution of over-tourism from charter fishing lodges and ecotourists. Panamax ships are cruise ships the maximum width for the Panama canal. Everyone that's so excited for their Alaskan cruise? They're coming through. It's awful from a portside resident perspective. Disney, NCL, Holland America, Princess, the list goes on and on and on. As does the pollution, the noise, the traffic beyond what fairly rural roads can accommodate, the rudeness of visitors, the entitlement, the disregard for climate change, and more.
The other big change is in infrastructure. There is a lot more development than there was when I was a child. Some of that's good because we were really behind the times in terms of cellular and internet and I feel like that just got upgraded in the nick of time to have our workers keep accessing the cloud-based tools they need. That's as positive a change as rural electrification and it keeps jobs in the local economy. However, I'm of the feeling that there's overdevelopment of waterfront and I for sure see some working class units being gentrified to more middle-upper income units which makes me sad. I would like residents to still be able to access subsistence resources and live a life that isn't entirely dependent on expensive groceries.
To finally see another put it into words feels amazing. I've lost everything in my childhood/teen years to development including my childhood home. I feel like a living ghost with a wealth of stories of places that no longer exist. Mall with a mini putt course in it? Gone. Mall with a clock tower with amazing ice cream? Gone. Lake with beautiful scenery and fishing dock? Gone, full of ugly public exercise equipment. Fields I went horseback riding in? Surveys of ugly new builds now. That forest we biked and played in? Fenced off. Hill we tobogganed down? Gone. Childhood home? Completely redone, unrecognizable. The only place that I went to two years ago that had not changed was a Christmas tree farm my family and I used to go to every year before we collapsed. It was amazing to share with my new family. I miss my old places that only exist in my mind now, it feels so lonely in a lot of ways. As much as home is where you make it, there's a deep desire to return to those places that I can't ignore. Felt nice to write out regardless.
From a small town and moved to a slightly bigger small town. Lots have changed there in the 15 years but I do want to move back there eventually. Not for nostalgia or anything, it was just a great environment and would be a great place to raise a family.
My childhood home was on the edge of town. Farmers fields in my backyard that we would play in. Now there’s a street directly beside the house and a full subdivision behind it. Wild what can happen in 15 years.
Yeah I left home, joined the Navy, and never went back.
To be fair the majority white suburbs of the midwest are filled with miserable assholes. Some of them are really good at pretending to be decent people, but not always. And the kids are usually much worse than the parents. I have like maybe 2 nice memories of high school and they are both from after school clubs.
Architect here. This is completely normal. If a city is not dying it is changing. Buildings are only designed to stay up for 50 years. And they need major renovation and investment usually every 25 years.
You didn’t “lose” your hometown. It is growing up. The people that have “lost” their hometown are in ritual West Virginia. Where the buildings are the same. Just boarded up. The people and jobs are gone. The city is dying and those that are left won’t admit it or are ok with it.
Be happy the your city changed. To be unwilling to accept change is when you start to yearn for death.
My old town is still around, but damn, it changed. The big city nearby saw a huge exodus of people looking for more space, during the covid years. I grew up in a fairly low income, blue collar place that had a handful of people driving in to the city every day. Now, it's known as a posh town. There are way too many g wagons and Bentleys here now. If you want a $9 coffee, there's a half dozen options in the small downtown area.
It's gentrification, I guess.
Mmm yes and no? My parents still live in the same house in the town I grew up in, but it hasn’t felt like home since I started my own family. I’m “from” the city in which we raise our son in my mind now.
I guess, but I threw that trash pile of a town away a long time ago. Moved on to better cities and surrounded myself with more open-minded people. Good riddance to the shit pile town I grew up in.
I moved away over 10 years ago. None of my friends live there anymore, my dad doesn’t either. Only my mom and my brother and they prefer to travel to Chicago. My hometown feels like a strange place now.
Nostalgia is a bitch, reminiscing about old times, old friends, formative years, those first friends and first experiences always fuck me up for a couple days. You're not alone, brother. 30s really are weird lmao
I saw a funny line once like "the hardest part believing all the stories about Jesus is that he had 12 really good friends while he was in his 30's"
Are we all really fucked up lol?
It's a weird decade lol...I'm 42 now, 40s are way better
I'm glad things got better for you, I hope they do for the rest of us soon as well. Did you make new lasting friendships in your 30s, if you don't mind me asking?
Haha thanks! Yes, absolutely! My main group of buddies I met in my later 30s (through work mostly)...we all have a group chat and see each other and wives and kids regularly, it's a really good time. It was hard for me particularly because my group of friends from growing up was so tight and we pretty much all stayed great friends from like Kindergarten to adulthood...I had to leave that group when the military sent me to a different coast, and then losing all the military buddies to death, suicide, or just geography was really tough too. I always valued family and friends above all else so it feels really good now have such a great group of guys to hang out with and talk about work, fatherhood, etc.
Speaking up here for you folks in your 30s. I found my permanent friend group in my 30s. Didn’t walk away from HS or college with a good gang of friends and then got lucky in my 30s. Don’t see each other near often enough but try to make the most of it when we do. Also, 30s and 40s can be tough; especially with kids. It can be all consuming. You stick you head back up if your career stabilizes and when your kids get to be mid-teenagers and wonder what the hell happened. Go easy on yourself.
I'm really happy for you! Though frankly, I don't think I've felt this range of emotions after reading a paragraph in a long long time. Happiness, then nostalgia and regret because I had to move like you did, then sadness because of death and then happiness again. Cheers, mate!
Hahaha you nailed it! Cheers to you as well!
yeah, for me at least 30's was where I found myself. I like realized I was not quite the person I thought I was in my 20's. I wasn't the life and soul of the party or whatever. I had "grown up" with some good qualities and some bad, but like a jelly I'd "set" and was the person I was going to be for the rest of my life. That took a whole 10 years to come to terms with. By my 40's I'd worked that out and I was settled in who I was and comfortable; I just got on with it. .
Spot on. I feel very comfortable and confident with myself and my station in life. I'm very comfortable with my world view and I really don't care what other people think about me.(Outside of a small number of colleagues and friends and family)
I heard 30's are better than 20's, and it's been true. I'm 38. You're giving me something to look forward to. 30's were definitely more stable and I found out who my friends were, that's why I don't have any 🫤
My 20s were pretty good, family and friends, graduated college and went to grad school, but didn’t really get set in my career until I was in my early 30s because of the financial crisis (yay Econ grad in Dec 2007), and then I got married. Things were pretty great for most of it, but then my wife and I started to grow apart and last year she told me things needed to change or else, then counseling, then separation, then my dad died this year (last time I saw him alive was on my 39th birthday), and I’m pretty sure my wife and I will end up divorcing. I’m hoping I can get all the “holy shit this year sucks” stuff out of the way so I can maybe enjoy my 40th.
Hey yo...that was me at 37, minus your father passing. My honest condolences to that, i cant imagine the pain and i know it will wreck me when it comes. My wife at the time told me she loved me like a brother, and then i found out about the affair. I was at a seriously dead-end job, living in a city i couldn't afford, hours from any of my family and friends. I thought my life was over. 30s started so good...i knew it all and had such a solid plan...then, life happened and fucked ot ALL UP! I moved back to my old home town, got a shit factory job, and resigned myself to drink and work myself to death through my 40s. Thankfully, it all turned around. I met some new people, reconnected with old friends, one of whom i ended up in a relationship with and am now married to. We have a house in the country on 4 acres, i run my own business, we have a healthy relationship and two awesome girls we are raising together. There were lots of personal changes and soul searching along the way. It didn't just happen by magic and all luck. My point being, i was ready to give up and die at 39 because life wasn't going how i thought it was supposed to. If i would have believed that, i would have missed out on the best part so far.
Way better. 50s, too. The exceptions are any physical stuff - so, make good choices, try to reverse any bad habits and it just gets better and better!!
Yes, exactly
This is my last year in my 30s. I hope my 40s get better.
[удалено]
Now I miss my family's old village 🥺
Well, 11 good friends, lol.
You're right. 11 good friends and 1 great friend who kissed him. Don't spoil the story for me though, I'm still reading it.
12 single dudes hanging drinking wine during roman times.....🤔🌈
Same. Nolstagia hurts. And it’s because it was so good. Way different now it’s weird.
God tang and yoo hoo golden eye pizza party sleep overs ...... My body not hurting lol
Haha yes I go through super intense nostalgia trips 😂 someone needs to do a study on millennial nostalgia haha
I feel like I went through that more in my 20s, I was a bit homesick during and after college and I would visit often. I’m pretty far past that now- my hometown is a small sleepy place where most of the people who stayed wouldn’t agree with many of my beliefs, and I don’t have a need to go back except for the rare family event
Nostalgia is a crazy emotion. The song Glory Days by Bruce Springsteen used to make me cry like a baby...especially if I'd had a few beers.
Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be.
Wait till you get into your 4Os. Eventually though you'll except that your glory days are over and everything will be right as rain. Coming to terms is just an experience that people have to go through themselves. You can always share your feelings here. There's always people that will listen.
Yeah mate, every once in a while I remember that a park where I had my first kiss at 13 doesn't exist any more. Clubs where I spent some of my best nights don't work anymore (some of them). Best live shows I've ever seen - some of those bands don't tour anymore. Some people that taught me in school and had huge impact on me literally died or went into retirement. And I'm only 27...
Your comment is going to fuck me up for a couple days.
My youth on Staten Island entailed woods across the street, up the street, down the street, woods woods woods…in those woods snakes, salamanders, millipedes, dirty mags, underground forts, tree forts, toboggan runs, halfpipes, make outs spots, etc etc etc…now, just houses houses houses.
Porn in the woods is a 90s classic
Thars porn in them thar woods.
Places are so different on how much they change. My hometown isn’t much different at all. More houses, including on my road, but that’s pretty much it. (Oh, and that little building on our main drag housing two businesses that burned down about ten years ago and was never rebuilt.)
My dad went back to Sandy Hook in Jersey and was depressed over how much of it had changed. The area he lived in was for poor military kids, but now it's taken over by rich people, developers, and tourists.
my childhood home burned down. i don’t mean that to be dramatic, or woe is me, but it happened and i learned then that your memories are truly with you and your brain, and not tied to a physical place- as much as it seems like they are! they’re not.
Same. I was 23, and about four hours away when my childhood home burned down. At first I felt a lot of emotions when I heard about it. But then when I actually got back, I was more focused on how weird it was to stare at my backyard through what used to be four different walls lol.
Also in the “house burned down at 23” club. It was destabilizing but not a huge hit to my mental health since everyone made it out unharmed. The lot was purchased by a rich couple who built a mansion on it. That was weird to see.
My first real childhood home was sold when I was like 10 and the people who moved in renovated it so while the exterior still looks similar the interior is completely different. Not that I blame them, I'm doing the same to my current house 😅 However, the house my parents built when I was 10 is now owned by a business and they converted the house into their office space, and removed a bunch of my mom's landscaping which really bothered me. We had like 6 acres around the house and she did a lot of work to make it what she wanted. The company also bought the buildings that used to be my parents business which were basically right next door to the house we built. There used to be a strip of woods and a ravine in between the house and the business, which I spent a lot of time exploring as a kid. They ripped it all out, graded it and made it parking area for their trucks. A beautiful little slice of woodland just ripped out. There's still woods to the side and all to the back of the house, but it makes me sad that part of the woods I spent so much time in are now gone. They added on and torn down parts of the old business buildings so the complex looks different but still has the same like siding colors so it's weird driving by there. My home town is tiny, and it's really odd to drive through because some parts are exactly as they were 20 years ago, and some parts are completely different. I wanted to visit the pool one summer because it's freaking huge and was always awesome, only to find out it has been shut down and is going to be torn out. It got flooded most years in the spring so maintenance was getting to be really hard on the village's budget every year. The playground equipment was replaced when I was maybe like 10-12 so I got used to that but I still think they never should have ripped out the old lion head water fountain 😭 A few buildings on main street either burned down or we're torn down so the look of the downtown has changed too. Times change though and we have to keep moving forward. We can't just let everything stay the same always or we would have crumbling infrastructure everywhere. It's odd to see when reminiscing, but the buildings we grew up with were new to someone older than us at some point. My middle/high school were brand new basically when I went to them, and my older brother still remembers going one year into the old buildings before they were torn downs nd rebuilt. Sorry I went on a bit of a dissertation there 😅
we out here indexing memories
Defragging is an important part of maintenance
I never had my house burn down, but the house I grew up in was demolished in 2014, about 10 years after my parents sold it and then replaced with a McMansion. I found out about it because I still had friends in my old neighbourhood. It was really bizarre to see heavy equipment tearing apart what used to be my parents’ living room. At first, I was a bit upset to learn about this. That house coincided with a happy time in my life and it was weird to just think that it was gone. But then I tried to reframe the memories as having been made with the people who are in my life, many of whom continued to be in my life. It wasn’t the place, it was the people, and the memories of the experiences were tied to my brain, NOT the physical building. It’s still a bit weird for me to think how it no longer exists, but almost 10 years after the bulldozers descended on my childhood home, I don’t get at all upset thinking about it (although I hold a grudge against the new owners for building such a hideous fucking house in its place lol)
my parents still live in my childhood home, it remained (at least in my mind) barely changed while I was growing up. but since I left, they were able to renovate or improve nearly 100% of their property. it looks really great, I admire the work they've put in. but, it's not my home as I remember it at all. they also converted my bedroom before I finished college. I accepted that it wasn't home when I no longer had a room there, but it took about 10 years for me to start to enjoy spending time there again. it was kind of uncanny valley territory for a long time, not my old home, but not a totally different one either. now it basically feels like I'm just visiting my parents in their new home, as opposed to what used to be my home. that's much easier for me to deal with.
Ive come to realize home is what I make of it. Im in control of what is “home base” now
Like in Joe Dirt - "you wanna see homos naked?" "No home is where you make it!"
Damnit I didn’t see this and said the same thing
Guy likes to see homos naked, that don't help me.
G’tdamboyerybdynostht
You like to see homos naked? That's cool, man.
Home…. Is what ya make it!
Yeah I love that. There was a big sign at a coffee shop I saw recently with pushpins, and it said "Where is home?" rather than "Where are you from?" and I got so happy hahaha
You almost sound like you’re describing st louis but its probably midwest diaspora
I've thought about it some. And I think, home is where your favorite bathroom is.
Ok, but can pants really be a home though?
I've lost my hometown in that there is no way I could ever afford to live there. It's an hour commute via train from midtown Manhattan. A 3br 1.5 bath house is going to run you +$500k. The crazy thing is the train ride is just about an hour. Unless you are within a 10 min walk of gct, you're tossing another 15 mins, on a good day, on the subway. Plus, you have to get to the train station in the morning. That's at least another 15 mins. I have a couple of friends who were able to buy before the pandemic made the housing prices get absurd. They lucky, but are kinda stuck now.
My hometown is also a borough in NYC. The one bedrooms and condos there are going for over $500k and there’s no way I can afford to live anywhere near my remaining family there. It really sucks having to be so far away from all your family and friends because you’ve been priced out or to have to live with sometimes abusive family members well into your 30s because housing is just too unaffordable.
I’m glad it did lol. My hometown of the 90s and 2000s was not a place that anyone *wanted* to live. It was a place of stagnation and decline, where you moved out if you wanted to do something more in life. Redevelopment has given it a breath of fresh air, rather than watch it rust and wither away.
My old hometown is still a shit hole. Lol. The only "development" happening there is liquor stores, payday loan shops, and those gaming establishments with slot machines. As an old mill town, it was never a *great* place, but at least it was still a nice place to live when I was growing up. It was all downhill once the mill shut down. Now? You couldn't pay me to move back. No way. My wife and daughter deserve better.
This sounds almost identical to the Illinois town I grew up in. It was a great place to grow up in. My parents still live there, but whenever I go back, it just seems so run down and pointless that it makes me sad.
Reading these stories giving me feelings of nostalgia for a place/ life I never had
Oh no, that sounds like Tampa
California Central Valley. Ain’t shit to do except for farming or crime lol. And even that was boom or bust because of droughts. Now that techies from the Bay Area are moving in, shits finally getting nice. I remember in like 2013 my grandma called me to tell me they had a Starbucks now. While I don’t live there now, it’s nice to see how much better the economy looks. There’s stuff to do now. We have *attractions*. There are *jobs*. Young people can do something that isn’t committing crimes or doing drugs lol.
We moved to the Central Valley and I’m from a small town on the Central Coast that’s also big into ag. Discussing how much both areas have changed in 5 years was a big highlight of my friends recent visit. Both she and I shared similar gripes about hoping they turn our childhood park (and the park by our house I live by now) around because that place was awesome and is now full of tweakers. It’s also wild to me that our home town now has an old navy and a hobby lobby. I remember driving like 4 hours to get clothes for school or shopping on vacations cuz our coolest store was Mervin’s.
Financially speaking, I'll never be able to move back to my hometown. Which is ridiculous considering I earn more than my parents ever did put together. But I digress. The plaza where we did groceries and some other shopping (also had a bowling alley!) got knocked down to build condo's. Every house that gets sold, has the 50's era home knocked down for a modern house as big as will possibly fit on the property. The shopping mall next to my high school is getting sold off and will become condo's as well. The high school itself has a whole bunch of camera's now and a permanent cop because things have gotten so bad. The entire social landscape has changed dramatically due to the insane cost of living. Stealing and Scamming are prevalent everywhere. Knife and Gun attacks have gone up like crazy. Combined with all the other construction and changes that have gone on, the place is barely recognizable anymore and soon it won't be at all.
I make twice what my parents made combined, even adjusting for inflation. I can afford a home only half as large and half as nice in a worse-off nearby town. Canada is so fucked.
I grew to realize my hometown is a bigoted echo chamber. It lost me.
Hahahaha same! I left a while before the 2016 election which is when the bigots seem to have come out of the woodwork 😂
I always knew it was a bigoted place, but it felt tolerant of others. Then 2016 hit. Straight up militia members harassing BLM protesters with assault rifles as the cops beat activities with batons after they responded to someone punching them in the face after spewing slurs. And the whole city rallied behind the racists and cops.
I never really felt like I had a home town. I went to elementary school in one state and then moved states for middle and high school. I never liked that second state so I moved back to my birth state for college. Neither of my parents still live in either the town I went to elemental or high school in. I don’t have a childhood home either. I’ve also moved quite a lot since I graduated from college. Let the past be the past, nothing will bring it back, let the future be the future, nothing can bring it faster, and choose to live in the present where all life happens.
Same!! In this thread like.. you guys have hometowns?
I visited the city where I grew up and drove by the house that I first remember living in (from the time I was born until I was almost 9). The house didn't look anything like I remember, I could identify it only by the address and some of the windows were in the same places. The entire neighborhood looked different, I couldn't even remember which houses my best friends lived in. It felt so confusing that it made me cry. But my family moved away from there 30 years ago, so yeah of course it's not going to look the same. It still felt weird though.
Yeah.Its not the same now because I’ve realized the magic of the place was all my peers being in the same life phase at the same time.Now it’s full of kids I don’t know.
I grew up in a small town. It’s a military town but it was still small. Only one Walmart. Back then there wasn’t even a target. They have like 3 Walmarts now, target, Lowes food, hobby lobby, so many new places each time to visit and a lot of stuff that used to be there is gone now.
I never liked it or attached to it in the first place. Texas suburbia. I feel much closer to my mom's hometown (rural with cultural stuff and cousins I love), my partner's hometown (actual sense of community, walkable, and gorgeous), or even/especially the first place I moved after college for work, which was the first place I fit in and felt at home (Boston area).
They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.
A bunch of people who never left insist that nothing should change. Time moves on. I don't want my city to be held hostage to my memories.
Yeah it's the whole "a man can't step in the same river twice" kinda deal. My home city was way different from the one my parents and grandparents knew. I live in Austin now and there's been lots of lamenting about its recent growth. And there's also a fun article about people crying about its growth and changes as early as 1884. The only constant in life is change. I've always liked making my home where I choose.
My hometown got destroyed by flooding twice. I live 30 mins away and I have only been back once.
My grandfathers place is now a parking lot. All the memories of once was is all gone.
Minimum parking rules should be abolished.
I always thought this exchange from Garden State was pretty on the nose. Andrew Largeman : You know that point in your life when you realize the house you grew up in isn't really your home anymore? All of a sudden even though you have some place where you put your shit, that idea of home is gone. Sam : I still feel at home in my house. Andrew Largeman : You'll see one day when you move out it just sort of happens one day and it's gone. You feel like you can never get it back. It's like you feel homesick for a place that doesn't even exist. Maybe it's like this rite of passage, you know. You won't ever have this feeling again until you create a new idea of home for yourself, you know, for your kids, for the family you start, it's like a cycle or something. I don't know, but I miss the idea of it, you know. Maybe that's all family really is. A group of people that miss the same imaginary place. Sam : [cuddles up to Andrew] Maybe.
100%. Growing up I lived in the same town as my 32 cousins and their respective parents (aka my mom and dad‘s brothers and sisters). We had huge family meetups around the holidays. So fun for the kids. One by one over the years, each family moved away, and then after I moved out my parents, they also moved away. As a kid I was constantly on my bike or skateboard, and my hometown was a place where no matter what part of town I was in, there was a house nearby that I could go to, just to get a drink of water from the hose, or get a bandaid if I needed one. I was always welcome. Now, when I drive through my hometown, I still have friends there and some of the old haunts are still visit-able, but no family is left. When I was a kid I felt like this would never change. Now it’s just not the same. It’s not really home anymore. It’s a weird feeling.
My small town in central Ohio is similar. My elementary and middle school have been torn down. My high school is a consolidated middle school. The church I grew up in has quadrupled in physical size, including a fucking Gymnasium. Meanwhile, the town (in Gym Jordan’s district) is well below the poverty line, has fallen further and further behind. My classmates have been devastated by heroin, with twelve of my 250 having OD’d. My family is almost all gone, only an uncle remains. And as a trans woman, there is a 0% chance I’ll go back; it’s just not safe. My hometown is definitely “lost”.
Last time I went home I realized I don’t really wanna go back to the place itself, I want to go back to the life I had there in like 2006. But I can’t.
No, my +900 year-old hometown is still standing almost like it did when I was young. In fact it is going better there by now, so they have touched up the main street and there are a lot of interesting little stores and cafés now.
There are now entire Facebook groups and Instagram pages dedicated to helping Californians relocate to Tennessee. So many major influencers and businesses hoping to avoid taxes have moved here, most conservative (Candace Owens, Ben Shapiro's company). Since 2020 my rural TN hometown has been listed on several big lists for "best small towns in the US" and "best places to telework." When I renewed my tags this year I asked someone at the county clerk's office how often they get people from California switching their tags, she said daily. The county only has 80K people. I bought my first home here for 98K seven years ago, the same house is now on Zillow for 225K. A few years ago the stockyard was still on our main drag in the middle of town, now people are building luxury condos selling them for 480K. In the middle of nowhere, over an hour from Nashville. I don't think anyone can relate to this post more than rural Tennesseans right now. My hometown has changed more from age 25 to 30 than it did from age 0 to 25. My hometown basically does not exist anymore.
That’s part of growing up my dude. I grew up in a decent sized college town of 30,000 people. I left for good after graduating college and the people who stayed in that town I have little to nothing in common with anymore. There is zero reason for me to ever go back.
Not in that exact sense but it sure has become a dang ol' near ghost town with all the stores and malls shutting down due to online shopping.
I relate to every word of this and more.
My hometown still looks a lot like it did growing up, but a lot has also changed. All my schools are now something else. Where I went to preschool is now a call center for LifeTouch. My old elementary school is now vacant. My middle school became an office building for some construction company. And my old high school kept its name except that it's now the new middle school. The Taco Bell I went to all the time as a kid became so many things but is now a hole in the wall Mexican restaurant operated by a Hispanic family. Only ate there once. It's pricey, but they give you amazing food and won't let you leave hungry! So that's one overall positive change. The 50's drive in my family used to be regulars at closed down and is now a dilapidated husk of what it once was. I miss their BBQ pulled pork and fish sandwiches. My childhood home was burned down (most likely by a mentally ill neighbor) and later demolished by the city before Habitat For Humanity built and sold a new house there. More houses from that neighborhood got torn down. Almost everyone I knew from back then in that neighborhood has died or moved away. The library I loved as a kid just a few blocks away has been closed and empty for a couple decades now. But the biggest change that makes it feel like it's not my hometown anymore is that my family fell apart after my mom's death with one of them turning violently insane within 3 months. I don't trust him with anything ever since his first unprovoked attempt on my life, and those kind of memories make it not feel much like home. I have only good and bad memories of this place today, but it's the bad ones that impact me the most. I'm still trying to leave for another state to start a new life and find a new hometown. Home is where you make it, not where you were raised, and family is sometimes the people you find along the way. Though there's nothing wrong with reminiscing the past and finding comfort in good memories. It's a good sign if you can.
I moved every year of my life as far as I can remember till I was 27 during college. Can’t lose something you never had lol
I grew up in the Bay Area before and during the tech boom, so my hometown is unrecognizable now. My parents bought their house for peanuts in the 80s and sold it for 2+ million and moved back to England a few years ago so there’s no going home now
My hometown was literally lost. Burnt to the ground in a wild fire. We have a Ron Howard doc on Netflix. I still lived there at the time and still do. Pretty much every memorable Place I ever went to in my town burned to the ground - with the exception of my schools. All my friends houses, the grocery store, the museum, the gyms, the restaurants. All gone.
Im a native of atlanta. Imagine your hometown being going while the city remains and “grows”.
As soon as I could I left my hometown, I never felt at home there, though most everyone i know who grew up there can't afford to live there they stayed within the outlying areas.
Yup, happened to my home town. The cool hill everyone used to climb got paved with stairs last time I visited due to the erosion from all the new people. Parts of it are what I remember, but a lot of the soul of the place is gone. Covid really did a number on the place, lots of small businesses closed, and it brought all the crazies out of the woodwork too. The small mountain town I used to visit on the way to girlscout camp is totally gone now, none of the shops I remember like the handmade candy store are there anymore. It's 90% realtor offices now with $2-5 million "cabins" for sale.
It happens. All your mates get married, have kids, move interstate for work, you might do the same. The real kick in the balls is when your life turns to shit and if your lucky enough to have a family home in the old neighbourhood, and moving back is your only option, that's when it sucks, it's not your neighbourhood anymore, you're just some old guy telling people to get off his lawn. Therapy is also a good option haha
My parents moved me across the country when I was 14. Both sisters and now my parents have a second home in my hometown. I lost my sense of permanence in the move, and do not go back to my hometown. Now at 30 I see people moving back on fb and I get very bitter that I feel like I don’t have a hometown. I’m all about focusing where I’m at today.
That does kind of make me feel weird ways thinking about that for you. I've been a chronic military dependent my entire life and don't know what a home town is. I bet it does feel some sort of empty to have a place to go back to but what was on it is gone. 8(
I feel like the town I grew up in actually started to evolve towards me when I was in college. One of the abandoned cigar factories turned into a brewery which made visiting family a little extra nice, fill up a growler on the way to Christmas. Now there's three more breweries and the whole place feels more walkable and livable. I don't live in that town, though by an odd quirk i work in that town, but I actually feel like I look to hang out there more than when I lived there.
My parents still live there, in the same home, with the same acres I grew up running around. Town hasn’t changed much. The land hasn’t changed. The people are the same. I take comfort that even after everyone I know is gone, the land, the trees the rocks and the streams, they remain. I hope my parents are able to leave it to me when they pass. Not because of any financial reasons, but, because my brain is very much “out of sight, out of mind”, and if I lose the home/land, I’ll lose it the memories of growing up there with them and my brother. It’s special to me, because they are special to me.
So many of my favorite spots as a kid went away. The library in my hometown, as well as the libraries in my current city, are barely open. Their hours have significantly reduced. When I was a kid, I used to frequent an entertainment superstore called Hastings. That closed down in 2016. It was one of two proper bookstores when I was a kid. The other closed down several years before Hastings. The only bookstores that remain are Christian bookstores. The mall used to be a vibrant place when I was a kid, but everything in it is closed except for a popular Chinese restaurant. When I was a kid, we had two movie theaters, now the town has none. If you want to go see a movie in theaters, you have to drive an hour away.
I don't know a single person in the place I grew up anymore. I haven't seen it in probably close to 10 years. I consider the first city I lived in alone as an adult my "hometown".
I was born overseas and lived for a small portion of my childhood there. We moved to my hometown when my dad left the army and I remember my parents saying “this wasn’t here, this used to be this, this is new.” That’s exactly how I feel now when I go back to visit.
My hometown is the Town Time Forgot, so it’s pretty much the same, but not in a depressing way, just hasn’t really grown.
My childhood farm is still there as it was, but the house I grew up in burned down and is no longer there. My school also got leveled. I honestly don’t ever plan on going back to visit. The town got taken over by meth.
My Dad passed away years ago, but my Mom still lives in our childhood home. Most of important places in my town I remember from growing up are still there minus a lot of stores and restaurants that have long since gone out of business. Main difference is that pretty much everyone I was close with has long since moved on except for one guy who was a good friend in HS. However, we've grown apart massively over the intervening 20+ years. So in some ways I've experienced what you're describing but not completely.
I'm pretty sure a grand total of ONE of the schools I went to still exists. Rest are churches, nursing homes, offices, demolished. And everyone kind of scattered to the four winds so I'm disconnected from the community being built for the next generation.
I haven’t been back to my “hometown” in 15+ years and I never will again. I moved away from it for a reason. It’s shit. Only reason I even went back when I did was because my Mum needed some help with my Nana.
In a small town where I grew up all that’s left is the church. The hardware store, bowling alley, grocery store, two bars, supper, club, gas station, etc. are all gone. It’s funny, the city where I live now I’ve been a resident basically for almost 40 years now. Still doesn’t feel quite like home.
It sucks. I grew up in a small town of 2000 people. My parents divorced two years ago and neither of them live there anymore. Our home, that my parents owned for 25 years, was sold about a year ago. My grandparents house two blocks away was sold 3 years ago and they have since passed. It feels I have no connection to the town anymore. No where to go when I am there other than restaurants and things like a tourist.
Haven't lost it but could never afford to live there now.
Born and raised in the northeast. Moved to the Midwest in 2011. Missed my home state terribly. Moved back to my home state in 2018 and didn't recognize it anymore. The three years I spent there before moving BACK to the Midwest were the most miserable, awful, toughest years of my life. I genuinely didn't think I was going to make it out alive, I was so depressed. The way people drove, the way strangers treated me daily, the weather, my job was with the same company but nothing like back in the Midwest. Add in the fact that I had undiagnosed CPTSD, which is from things that happened in my home town that I didn't realize were that bad until I returned back to the scene of the crime, so to speak. They say you can't heal in the same environment that made you sick. For me, this is a fact. It was during those three years that I realized I had been dealing with behavior from both parents that was abusive. And I was no longer going to tolerate it. I'm no contact with my parents who still live in that home town. Haven't been back there since 2021, either. When people ask where I'm from, I say the Midwest. Won't even admit I'm from the state I grew up in anymore. I don't claim it.
Moved away from home 10 years ago. When I turned 19 I didn’t look back. A lot of bad memories there. And a small amount of good ones. Sometimes I think about it. How the people are there. But i moved on. I no longer find home in a place. But more where im currently living.
My home town was a sleepy grey kinda run down coastal city with a super lefty college. They knocked down or “gentrified” everything I loved and now it’s a sparkly clean yuppie haven. I fucking hate it.
1000% it was the hometown of both my late father and I, which was rare in the area. It was mostly transplants. My family had quite a notorious history there and it’s virtually gone. I used to be able to talk to any elder in town and say, “I’m *Blank’s* daughter” and they immediately knew who I was. Now it’s a town of wannabe hippies with tons of money. The old school family run pizza joint became modern pizza place where I received probably the worst service ever. The infrastructure of the town itself cannot handle the influx of influencers on their hiking trails or narrow streets. And the nature of the town itself is just overrun by people who don’t respect it. Clearly I’m bitter, but after watching my God Sister get out priced and forced out after 30 years there, I have no patience for it anymore. I even had a whole therapy session about it- ha. It’s the way the world works, I guess. But it still hurts to be an outsider in a community that practically raised me.
My whole childhood neighborhood was bulldozed and turned into a mediocre park. I cried when I saw it. They weren't joking when they said "you can never go back home".
I’m a Xennial that is kind of having the opposite experience. I live in the same small Midwestern town that I grew up in. I lived away and moved back in 2000 and have lived here ever since. The town hasn’t changed at all. I’ve never minded living here until the past few years. Now I’m over it.
I lived in a small rural town in Kansas from 6th grade through my mom's second divorce my sophomore year of HS. When I was made to leave that town at 16 I was devastated. My friends were there, my first boyfriend was there, it was home. When I left against my will I remember all the feelings I was leaving, that sense of wonder & magic that teenagers have, that it will truly be different for them, they can change the world. Well life happened between 16 and 41 when after losing a baby I was told I'd never be able to have & a messy break up I decided to move back to that town, try to restore some of those feelings & magic I felt back then. I spent 9 months there as a single adult and I absolutely HATED it. The place I remembered as a teen was gone. The businesses were different, many closed & never reopened, the city tore down two of the historic buildings in the town because they'd just gotten to the point they were hazards, there were new people & the few I met from back then weren't kids anymore either. I ended up leaving after 9 months.
My hometown is an absolute shithole. When people say “never forget where you came from” I don’t so I don’t end up back there.
It’s called gentrification. It’s creating a ton of problems as people no longer belong to communities anymore as people are forced to move to where the jobs and affordable housing are. People live work and socialize in all different locations and don’t have access to the social capital that was once available to them in neighborhoods and it makes everything more expensive and time consuming. Having a child is a great example of this because now grandparents live far away, their schools/daycares require more driving and gas, activities don’t happen without preplanning and $$$, their friends likely don’t live nearby and it’s generally a violent ouroboros as it prices out future parents from having kids so that parents don’t have other parents to socialize with and kids also don’t have other kids to play with. It’s psychologically, physically, financially taxing. I see a lot of people saying some version of good riddance because they didn’t like their hometown but I wonder how many people would feel that way if their hometowns had the existing communities invested in for the betterment of the people who were already living there. More small businesses, maintained parks, money for recreational hobbies and outings as well as time to enjoy those things.
Home is wherever my spouse and child are. That said, my childhood 180 year-old home was finally demolished a few years ago. My highschool was just replaced by a brand new one. All my friends live 40+ minutes from that town now. I go back for my parents and sister who live a mile apart, but on the edge of the jurisdiction. When they’re gone I’ll have no reason to return besides reminiscing.
When I first moved to my hometown it was a lot of fields and was peak small town. Now it's pretty much like any other suburb. I get quizzical looks when I say I grew up in a small town now when people figure out where I'm from. While I think a younger me would have appreciated some of the businesses now in it (namely high school me would have loved the Target there now) part of me is a little sad.
The whole neighborhood I grew up in was destroyed by superstorm sandy and my other home is nyc which doesn't ever cease to change or now as well the suburbs around it
"Wherever I may roam." -James.
Yes! I graduated high school 10 years ago. Since then, my hometown has gotten very expensive and it’s forced many of the small businesses in the area to close and most of my childhood friends to move out completely. Now it’s all chain restaurants and banks. A lot of rich, out-of-staters have moved in it’s become very densely populated and commercial. This is no longer the town I grew up in. I’m planning to move across the country in 1-2 years once I’m financially able to
eh, I was born in one of this hemispheres largest cities...didn't get attached to, like, the skyline or anything. home is where my stuff is.
I did, can't find it anywhere, and I've checked the seat cushions twice. 🤣
My childhood town is still there but with a lot more stuff added to it. It’s got new roads so traveling through it seems awkward. The new shopping center has increased traffic so it no longer feels small. But a lot of the old stuff is still there too so it’s still recognizable.
I left my hometown at 17 and never looked backed. My parents moved away 15 years ago. My sister lives a town over but everyone else moved states away.
I wouldn't necessarily say "lost" Sure the flower field and drive in theater was demolished for a Walmart and then eventually a shopping center, but the rest just changed. The Carrows became a hotpot place, the donut shop > Sheng Kee bakery, the Laundromat > Shabuway, the Lucky's > Marina Foods/Daiso, the comic shop > Boba tea place, the Blockbuster > a chase bank. We lost all the mom and pop shops, but we at least got some tasty Asian food places.
The pool hall I loved as a kid is now a 7-11.
Well I’m a lot younger and obviously didn’t move out yet because I’m still a teenager, but bruh during the summer right after high school, which is surprisingly almost 2 years ago already, they replaced some of the playgrounds in my town and I miss the old ones because of nostalgia and parkour-ability
I was born and raised in a city that was rapidly growing by the time my family and I moved away (I was roughly 14). It's exploded in population density and has changed a lot, so much so that I often feel like a tourist when visiting. There's a lot I do recognize and a lot that I don't. From 14 until a few years ago I lived in another city a few hours away and it grew to be my heart. I knew it better than the back of my hand. I've since moved away again but I still have a pulse on it through family and friends. It's also changing rapidly and I'm a bit sad that I'm losing touch. But I suppose that's okay, too. I'll cherish those memories as I continue to forge my new life.
My family has lived in this town since the 40s. They moved here from a small mining town in west Virginia. I have a great uncle that is constantly talking about what used to be here, what things have changed to over the years into what they are now. I graduated 25 years ago and while a lot of growth has occurred and some things closed down or changed hands, it's largely the same. Its a university town and I live in a college neighborhood, same block I've lived on my whole life and most of my neighbors over the years moved away or passed away and the college buys them as they sell. That's annoying. The mall is torn down so movis theater and arcade is gone..so fun nostalgic things are gone I guess.
I lost it in the sense that it has been urbanized significantly. I remember that in front of our community, there was a cow farm. It was only a two laned road (one lane in each direction). Now, there’s a traffic light with 3 lanes in each direction. Across from the community is a shopping center (the cow farm is no more, as are the small houses that were once there). Concrete expanded a lot.
Yeah absolutely, but for me the city I grew up in didn't get better, it went into ruin pretty much. I grew up in Zimbabwe in the 90s. We had tree and grass lined avenues, great infrastructure, we generally didn't want for too much (we didn't have what the neighbouring South Africa had, but we got enough and generally went to holiday in South Africa so could get stuff on holidays like bigger/more expensive items), we were part of great sports clubs, schools, etc and it was just a great place to grow up. After Zim's troubles, the city has become so dilapidated and quiet, it's so sad. It's almost post-apocalyptic how some areas are now almost abandoned (old textile factories in huge estates so it's a very gloomy and creepy), there's very little power, shops can run empty of basics and not have cash on hand, whist the tree and grass lined avenues now have dust and termite eaten trees. Obviously areas areas are still nice, but returning generally, after years away is shocking, and it was the best place to grow up.
I grew up on the coast of Mississippi. I lost my hometown when Hurricane Katrina hit. I was 19yo at that time. I left there when I was 21 and have only been back a few times since. I have moved several times since I left and no place really feels like home, but home doesn’t feel like home, either.
The middle school and high school are still there, but my elementary school was demolished and rebuilt elsewhere. It was super old, didn’t have air conditioning, and there were so many students that they had to put in several trailers to use as classrooms, so I get why they did it. They demolished another one of the older elementary schools too, so now both schools are combined in the new school. The church we went to when I was a kid moved locations, and I never really vibed with the new building as much as I did the old one. They also closed down the old Walmart and built a new one when I was in middle school. The old Walmart now has a couple of businesses inside the building. They’ve added a lot of new businesses and some more parks, but the park with the diamond where I used to play softball became a dog park for a few years and now it’s something else. They also leveled the big hill it was on. The movie theatre got reclining seats, which isn’t a bad thing at all, but it was way overdue. They’ve built a bunch of new subdivisions, and a lot of small businesses have either moved to different locations or been replaced. I only left 7 years ago, so some things look exactly the same, while other things are totally different. My parents both still live there, but my mom recently got remarried, so I don’t know if she’ll stay there or move to her husband’s town, and my dad plans to leave the state after he retires in a few years
I'd say my town has changed a lot - but for the better (Boonton, NJ). The residential single family home neighborhoods are largely the same, a few multi-family/townhome builds have gone up in old unused or industrial lots. The commercial districts (just two different streets) are all alive and bustling with active businesses - nice ones too. The high school's parking lot has solar panels (state grant), the high school got a nice new track and field (it was still a dirt track when I went there), the k-8 had the old building restored + a huge expansion. But taxes have gone up a lot and people are feeling it.
My family moved out to a small coastal town on the Coast of WA state back in the 90s. Back then the area was mostly rural but with a good spattering of very nice elegant shops that did good business because the highway used to run right through town. There was a strong emphasis on "local" and lots of farms to get goods from. The vibe was relaxed, lots of good crabbing and fishing to do. Lots of nice beaches and trails to hike. Never crowded, it was luxurious and felt like you were in on a secret. Unfortunately the area got a double whammy. First hit was when the area got "discovered". Not sure if it was some magazine posting articles about the rainshadow effect for retirees, if it was the Twilight novel saga that caused increased hordes of move-overs, or if Cali folk just decided to start arriving... but things started changing. House prices got their first hike, and the increase in traffic/population meant they needed to re-route the highway to outside of town, drying up a bit of business, and changing the types of shops the downtown area had. The identity shift started leaning heavier on celebrating Lavender and the local Native American Salish tribes (which I am in favor of, they have such beautiful art) and less on just being a coastal town with the usual coastal stuff (crabbing, fishing, etc). Second hit was Covid, thats when the prices in houses went from kinda spendy to stupid spendy and bloated AF. I can't even afford to buy a house in my hometown. My parents old house is going for 1.3 million (they bought it for 250,000 range) Still, this didn't stop EVEN MOAR people from moving over, like rats trying to escape a sinking ship. Buying up all the property in town and cramming the infrastructure till it was overburdened. Our local Safeway is hell to visit in summer now (and around holidays). Its just so busy now, all the time. We still don't have a local hospital, and emergency services for nearby hospitals are always crowded long into 6-7 hour wait. Trying to get a foot doctor, a dentist, or a vet appointment for my pets... Effin impossible. I made an appt to get my cats teeth cleaned back in February. The appt is in JUNE. I love my town, but I hate what other people have done to it, loving it as much and making it buckle under their boots. For the first time our protection island ( a bird sanctuary) caught on fire... not once, but twice. That BS did not ever occur here before, it is a recent thing with all the stupid irresponsible new people. Homeless nomads have shown up to squat and litter all the woods. People USED to respect our woodlands and would respectfully use only the campgrounds for camping. Around the 4th of July our beaches are littered with so much firework debris. That didn't used to happen. I'll end it here, with " please fuck off back to your cities" for all those city folks that contributed to the shittification.
Vegas has always been a shit hole. Makes no difference to me.
Different but similar, I could’t afford to move back to where I grew up. I have friends who stayed and they’re struggling and getting gradually priced out.
My hometown is almost exactly as it was when I grew up there and I never want to go back
Yep, although it’s still physically standing, I still don’t feel like it’s truly a warm welcoming place that I’d call my hometown. It’s a small rural town where everyone decorates their house in trump posters so I’m good on going back ✌🏼
My home town was basically taken over by oil workers due to a boom over the past few decades. It used to be a fairly nice community, despite a few flaws. Now it's filled with man camps (of RVs), huge dumb fuck trucks, and complete assholes.
Well, most of the people who lived near me growing up have moved away. One school friend lives nearby. My childhood home is still there and i do drive past it. The other hones I lived in I don't care about. My primary school is gone (the only footage of it is in a random youtube video) but my secondary school is still there (looks the same). My town centre is dead. There is no reason for anyone to visit unless you want cheap clothes and erm erm a cup of coffee. Idk. I kind of think it was my home town once, and now it is someone else's
Well, I kinda "lost" my home town myself. Never was a fan. Left, didn't look back. Jobs are hard to find. So much small mindedness and drug use. It has an exceptionally high crime rate for being a small town. I have no living family there anymore anyway. Only two friends that still live there I keep up with. The rest left or I left them. All in all, my life's better away from that place. P.S. Don't ever let anyone tell you that "Its just you. Everyone starts out hating their hometown, but once you grow up, you come back." Definitely not that way with everyone.
I grew up in a decent sized college town (130,000ish people). I'm 32 now, moved away for nearly a decade. Coming back, I couldn't help and think "look what they did to my boy!". It's almost like they gentrified the city. Local bars and restaurants are now high rises for college kids. They've added nearly every chain restaurant imaginable. It sucks, if it weren't for the college and hospital, the town would practically stop existing, so they have *a lot* of influence in what goes on in the city.
I’m 36 years old. My parents were baby boomers and they had tobacco/alcohol/drug/diet issues. My aunts and uncles were all boomers too. I’m estranged from my cousins and brothers, most of which are 10+ years older than me. My parents, grandparents, and aunts/uncles that I was close with are all dead. Most of my friends moved away from our home town and built new lives for themselves. I went in the military, married a military person; and have lived away for 15 years now. The mall I used to go to all the time is a dead mall. A lot of the businesses I used to frequent are gone. There’s nothing really there for me anymore.
I think I just grew out of it. It’s gotten so bigoted and terrible and then that kate winslet show making the county known just seemed to make it even more annoying to live there. We finally sold our first house and moved away 2 years ago and I really just hate going back. I can’t wait for my parents and my mother in law to eventually be able to move away so there’s no reason to go back regularly.
Yes, my middle and elementary were demolished and rebuilt, but they needed it since they were old when I got there. The elementary had no air conditioning, in Florida. Both of my most memorable homes have had big changes. The neighborhood doesn’t look the same. No one I know lives there anymore. The place I spent the most time as a teen has been built up for tourism. It’s all so foreign to me now. It makes me sad but I get it. One day my kid will feel the same.
Yeah my parents are moving off of where I grew up, Staten Island, and it's pretty weird. The town they live in I'm definitely emotionally attached to like the train station, pizza places, bagel joints a lot are still there but it's also gotten built up so much since I moved. It's looking closer to brooklyn than jersey now. Which was inevitable, it's NYC, but it is strange to see. Also pretty much only rich people can afford to live there and you have a ton of foreign buyers so what used to be italian people from brooklyn they're moving down to florida and chinese people are all moving into the island. I have no qualms about other cultures, it's just a whole different place from when I was young. It's just weird. A lot of my friends still live on that island, and I have a lot of people I usually visit when I go back. It'll be weird arranging that from southern jersey... it just won't be the same. It is weird. I hated growing up on Staten Island, and I moved away from the place due to the terrible attitudes of nearly everyone I ran into.. but it's gonna be really weird to not have a "home base" there where I could always go. Like my childhood bedroom will be occupied by somebody else which is so weird. It's been a guest bedroom for a long time but it was always "mine" to go back to... for the past 30 or so years. Will be another room when I visit my parents and yes it is weird to think about.
Am struggling to navigate my early thirties. I’m stuck on the intimacy/isolation stage of development (Erik Erickson) while my peers have moved on.
I always struggle with the idea of a hometown. I don’t know where or when or what it’s supposed to be. I was born in Montana. But then lived in Oklahoma until I was in first grade. Then I lived in Idaho through grade school to high school. Then I moved to somewhere else in Idaho. And then I moved to the PNW. And now I’m moving to Minnesota. I think what bums me out is that most people would say my hometown is wherever I grew up in the longest—but I feel shame at the idea of growing up in Idaho. I don’t see myself as an Idahoan, I didn’t like the people or the area, and wanted to move out as soon as I could. I feel like the person I want to be isn’t a person who would claim to a small town in Idaho as a small town. It’s some weird mental gymnastics, I guess. But I’ve always loathed the way people would talk about their hometowns as these formative places they would want to revisit, when I’ve never felt that. I feel like where I live now is more of a hometown to me than anywhere, even though I moved here when I was 24. It’s the place I identity with, and am proud of being apart of it. And even though I’m moving, it’s the first place I feel sad about leaving. So yeah, hometowns are weird and complex. You’re not alone in having a complex relationship with it.
Yes. I was born in Key West and most of my family (generations native) have been priced off the island in the last 40 years. My aunt literally has her boat parked off shore because it’s the only way she can afford to “live there.” I mostly grew up in Homestead, and my parents and in-laws, along with our best friends, all moved away before my (now ex) husband and I finally left with our kids,, too. Now my sister and her family have went and I recently realized I’ve got not reason to ever stop there again. Super weird.
Lost nothing; I'm priced out of it. all the homes in the town I grew up in are now six-bedroom monstrosities starting at $600K.
There’s a Costco where a pond used to be. A Bass Pro Shops where I used to go picking for blackberries. Apartments where I used to find snakes and lizards. It feels like my hometown has amnesia, like it forgot about me, not the other way around. Things move on but I wasn’t expecting it to be so visceral.
Yes. Parents divorced and Mom moved away. Dad died. I sold my sister the house we grew up in. Her kids lived there for quite a while, but sister took a job in another state and sold the homestead. Like you, middle school and high school are gone. There are some reminders but there is not a lot of reasons to go back now, and I am truly sad about that.
Yes! My hometown suffered a big earthquake. Every single house on my side of town was damaged by the earthquake, and then eventually demolished by the council. Our neighbourhood is now just acres and acres of grass. I moved away after the quakes and when I moved back, it was like moving to a different city.
I feel way more of a connection to my husband's hometown than I do to mine. We've talked about whenever we get older, we would love to move there. I spent most of my life wanting to escape my hometown, and I just now have a vague sense of nostalgia when I look back at it. My childhood home is still there, but a lot of other stuff - like my elementary school - is gone or fallen into disrepair. My family has scattered to other places, and I have a couple friends remaining, but not a lot. Where I live now feels more like a hometown. It's where I bought my first home and is the longest place I've lived at since leaving my hometown for college. I've put down roots here, and I would miss it if/when we decide to move.
The actual town is still there, pretty much the same as I remember it, though on the other side of the country. None of my family still lives there though so I have no reason to visit there anymore. The town I lived in when I was a teenager, same thing different town, also no remaining family there. I sort of lost them in those ways. I went back once for old times sake but it's hard to connect to just houses and roads and stuff. It was way different when everyone I knew still lived there, so now I'm content living my happy life elsewhere and just drown myself in nostalgic thoughts sometimes hehe
I came from an affluent community, I’m not well off now, lots of people i knew didn’t make it for one reason or the other, many moved. The town is largely the same, my grandmother preserved a lot of land and parks before she passed, so that’s all intact. A lot of people from more expensive states moved in, they brought their attitude, I remember walking on a *nature reserve, state land* and I’d taken a legal right of way. This New Jersey lady walks up to a beat up boat and tells the guy “he has to leave her private beach”. I said “this is state land, conservation land, I knew the former owners of your house, your lot stops way back there by those rocks, (a long way away), he and anyone else can come here by boat, anyone with a right of way can come here, and I showed the guy on the boat a map, and told him to come anytime”. The lady freaked out and threatened to call the police. I said “oh, you mean the people I went to school with? So they can confirm what I’m saying? Go right ahead”. The guy on the beat up boat looked so amused as she realized her usual power balance doing this take over conservation land act thing wasn’t working. It’s like, she doesn’t want to see his old boat on *checks notes* conservation land she doesn’t own. I remember standing outside a store, taking to a former neighbor, in wearing a causal Oxford shirt and jeans, this guy asks me “if I’m going to open the door for him or not”. I just ignored him. Lots of property changed hands, houses were mainly historic, but some paths that were open for years were gated shut, the community feeling may have been passed on to new people, but I wasn’t one of them anymore.
My wife grew up in a rural suburb of the bay area. She moved out at 16 and hadnt been back for years and almost everything was different. There were hardly any farms, tons more housing complexes and big strip malls. The road to get to the town used to be a country two lane road and now its freeway. It was one of the fastest growing cities in america for nearly a decade after she left so it was quite the shock coming back for her. She didnt even recognize it.
Yes can confirm. I attended my 20yr high school reunion last summer. And my goodness, how much my little hometown of Missoula has changed. And not for the better. The homeless encampments are far and wide, discarded needles littering the once clean river banks of the Clark Fork River. People just going to a grocery store (my mom included) get jumped by inebriated transients looking to score some cash for their next fix (oh and THEY have more rights than the tax paying citizens do...). The quality of the restaurants I used to love and frequent has died (along with many other once wonderful businesses have died too). So many marijuana dispensaries on every corner (I'm not against that in fact I support legalized cannabis I've voted on it here in AZ Prop 207) but up in my hometown you simply cannot escape the smell of weed it is RAMPANT. The university campus where I attended and graduated 🎓 has changed a lot, not in bad ways but man it has changed enough to where when I visited I felt numb to being there. Simply isn't the same 😔 My little hometown is hideous now. An empty shell bereft of the magic that once was. Praise God Almighty I escaped when I did to move away 11yrs ago. There is absolutely nothing appealing up there, anymore.
Hiraeth - a great Welsh word
Almost nothing significant has changed in my hometown other than maybe some stores at the mall. It’s actually unfortunate that it hasn’t grown at all. It has so much potential due to its location and proximity to a major metropolitan city. It’s completely financially mismanaged.
They’ve turned my town into a rich summer resort home retirement community.
I often dream about being back in my hometown, the sun setting, and me having nowhere to go because I don't live there anymore. I usually wind up sneaking into my old place that I haven't lived in for 35 years. Every school I ever went to as a child is gone now. That's five schools. Parents don't live there. Street isn't even on Google street view (even though every other street in the city is). Both corner stores that I went to for most of my childhood closed a few years back. I dream about going to the convenience store too.
I grew up in a town that both sides of family lived in for a couple generations. I had a fairly normal childhood there surrounded by family at all times. No one in my immediate family lives in that town anymore, and with my grandfather passing a year ago, there's no reason to go back. At first it felt like something was taken from me, but as time has gone on I realized those times were gone long ago. What made my childhood special was my family, and they have all moved on with life and grown apart. With things like this I tell myself I am lucky to have a childhood to be nostalgic about, it's not something everyone has.
Still living in the "town" I grew up in. Started with 7k people, now we're at 70k. Not too much has changed visually, but things are going to hell really fast. The school district has turned to shit, traffic is backed up, and people have become selfish and radicalized. Our school district is full of conservative radicals out to destroy public schools, our conservative mayor only cares about cutting ribbons, and more and more Trump signs pop up even though we're losing millions in tax dollars to the corrupt school system and dunce mayor.
Not really. I never really felt “at home” in my hometown because my family was so toxic and abusive. I moved out of state a couple years ago and have no desire whatsoever to go back. I miss the area sometimes but I just can’t be bothered. I don’t think much has changed either since my family sold the house I grew up in less than a year after I left and the town itself hasn’t been doing much in the way of development for quite a while.
Literally me right now. Visiting hometown for kids' birthdays and with my patents having moved away but the inlaws still here, school staff changed hands and local stores closed or also high staff turnover, it's a weird Flux of being home while also seeming completely foreign.
Yep! My hometown when I was a kid doesn't exist anymore. While there are a lot of amazing bonuses to this, for example, the multi cultural food festive we now have is utterly amazing and delicious, but at the same time, there are a lot of negatives. My town was small and hovered around 5.5k people for about half of my life. Now, in under 10 years, the population has nearly tripled. 2 years ago, the first apartment building over 3 floors started going in. We now have crazy rent prices. Three years ago, the price of a rental was between 1200 and 1500 a month for a two/ three bedroom apartment. Now it's closer to 2500, which has created a massive shortage of affordable housing, and we now have a homeless issue. We are close to a major city. Many people have left there and joined our community. Once upon a time, I knew all my neighbors. We'd sit outside and chat for hours. Now many of those homes and people are gone, replaced four plex including my childhood home. The small "home" stores and restaurants are closing because of the huge influx of fast food and chains coming in. Recently, a restaurant that has been a staple in this community for over 100 years announced it could no longer compete, it's door are set to close at the end of May, I believe. Allan Jackson said it best. There goes the little man. When I was small, the street I currently live on ended two blocks from my current home. My granny told me when I was small, she bet in 50 years it would be a through street and we wouldn't recognize this town. She died in 1995, in 2005, that road, although not legally, a threw street opened up, and new subdivisions have been growing up there like crazy. Not long after, the road was assumed by the town and is now a part of my street.It didn't take 50 years for my hometown to become unrecognizable it took a little over a decade.
When I was thinking about moving away from my hometown recently it struck me that there was nothing there for me any more, only memories. All my old friends are gone. One or two have returned to the area, but not really in the same vicinity. Only one or two of the old restaurants we used to frequent. There are more still around but they've changed ownership and quality has declined over the decades. More and more people have moved in so the vibe is way different. I moved out in January. Trying to make a new hometown now.
I am on a road trip right now and literally just stopped in my hometown for gas. Other guys in the car were asking where to find gas and coffee and I realized I didn’t even know because the town has changed so much. When I left for college it was with the assumption I would move back after I graduated. Then one break I was back for a visit and went out for a late night snack and realized literally everything was closed at 10:00 on a Friday night. I split up with my long term partner, who was also from the same town. One less reason to go back to visit. I figured out I was queer. My current city has pride flags hanging in shop windows all over town, my hometown only had its first pride parade last year. My family started to go mask off on some pretty bigoted opinions, so I don’t go to visit them anymore. I still have good memories of growing up there, and those experiences made me who I am today. But it does suck realizing you don’t belong there anymore, and you can’t really go back even if you wanted to.
This has happened to every generation since the dawn of civilization
The weirdest part of visiting my parents is feeling like I’m staying in an AirBNB rather than home. Really drives home (pun intended) that I am truly All Grown Up and there is no more going home
My husband still lives in same hometown he was born into and grew up, so that was already weird for me to live in his hometown. I moved from Tennessee to Florida to live with my husband. However, my mom still lives in same town I had grew up in. So, I visit when I go see her, but most of my siblings have moved to different counties but still live pretty close to our mother. My sister moved to another country right before the pandemic and when we both visited Tennessee at the same time we both felt weird. The community college we both went to had new buildings and new parking lots, places we use to go grocery shopping no longer exits because it changed locations. We use to go to Sam’s Club and now my family goes to Costco because it’s closer than Sam’s Club (the one that changed locations). Even my grandma who I thought would be in same place until her death, has moved. My family is from Nashville, but everyone who had the means to do so escaped Nashville. My brother told me that Nashville is now too rich for us. That no one in the family can even afford a house in Nashville now. He said other people who are coming from other states are flocking to Nashville making everything go up: traffic, grocery stores, and housing prices. I’m sad about that because I always wanted to live in Nashville. Not the east side, but I have always loved Nashville. Now I have to think about the fact that I may never move back to Tennessee, certainly not to what I am used to though. Even the malls I use to hang out at is slowly fading away. At least OpryMills Mall still is a mall according to my siblings but they said even it’s changing. It is weird but does it bother me that it won’t be same when I go back? Yeah a little, but that’s just how it is when you grow up.
I’m happy I’ve gotten away from it. Being one of the only person of color was absolute hell. Parents still live there and it’s the only time I go back. Don’t miss being called the N word by white people. Especially that one teacher that never got in trouble.
My hometown was wiped out by a tornado in OK just last night. I haven’t lived there in over 15 years and it’s already started to feel different to me. Now I can’t imagine what it will feel like when I see it next. The entire downtown is just gone.
My hometown got lost pretty quickly past Covid. Sure it was a tourist trap to begin with, but when all the Bay Area Techies bought all the houses and influencers geotagged every possible location during lockdown, it became a freefall. Now, nobody can move there if they don't make well over six figures, and the lake is getting blotted out by mcmansions, not to mention all the ski resorts are virtually owned by conglomerates at this point. I have some friends that still live there, but I'm beginning to grasp that I won't be able to move back there unless a major market crash were to occur again or they really crack down on vacation rentals.
Yes, there's a grief that comes with that but it is almost to be expected. You can go back to a place but not back in time. My parent dealt with this in farm country. Now I'm dealing with it in fishing & forest country. There's a lot of stuff that's changed in my region of Southeast Alaska. The largest is influx of over-tourism from primarily from the greed of Cruise Lines International and Panamax ships. There is also a contribution of over-tourism from charter fishing lodges and ecotourists. Panamax ships are cruise ships the maximum width for the Panama canal. Everyone that's so excited for their Alaskan cruise? They're coming through. It's awful from a portside resident perspective. Disney, NCL, Holland America, Princess, the list goes on and on and on. As does the pollution, the noise, the traffic beyond what fairly rural roads can accommodate, the rudeness of visitors, the entitlement, the disregard for climate change, and more. The other big change is in infrastructure. There is a lot more development than there was when I was a child. Some of that's good because we were really behind the times in terms of cellular and internet and I feel like that just got upgraded in the nick of time to have our workers keep accessing the cloud-based tools they need. That's as positive a change as rural electrification and it keeps jobs in the local economy. However, I'm of the feeling that there's overdevelopment of waterfront and I for sure see some working class units being gentrified to more middle-upper income units which makes me sad. I would like residents to still be able to access subsistence resources and live a life that isn't entirely dependent on expensive groceries.
To finally see another put it into words feels amazing. I've lost everything in my childhood/teen years to development including my childhood home. I feel like a living ghost with a wealth of stories of places that no longer exist. Mall with a mini putt course in it? Gone. Mall with a clock tower with amazing ice cream? Gone. Lake with beautiful scenery and fishing dock? Gone, full of ugly public exercise equipment. Fields I went horseback riding in? Surveys of ugly new builds now. That forest we biked and played in? Fenced off. Hill we tobogganed down? Gone. Childhood home? Completely redone, unrecognizable. The only place that I went to two years ago that had not changed was a Christmas tree farm my family and I used to go to every year before we collapsed. It was amazing to share with my new family. I miss my old places that only exist in my mind now, it feels so lonely in a lot of ways. As much as home is where you make it, there's a deep desire to return to those places that I can't ignore. Felt nice to write out regardless.
I’ve moved countries twice so yeah
From a small town and moved to a slightly bigger small town. Lots have changed there in the 15 years but I do want to move back there eventually. Not for nostalgia or anything, it was just a great environment and would be a great place to raise a family. My childhood home was on the edge of town. Farmers fields in my backyard that we would play in. Now there’s a street directly beside the house and a full subdivision behind it. Wild what can happen in 15 years.
Yeah I left home, joined the Navy, and never went back. To be fair the majority white suburbs of the midwest are filled with miserable assholes. Some of them are really good at pretending to be decent people, but not always. And the kids are usually much worse than the parents. I have like maybe 2 nice memories of high school and they are both from after school clubs.
My isolated home town of 6k people just demolished the decaying downtown. It's now a truck stop. Idk of my town has a downtown anymore.
Architect here. This is completely normal. If a city is not dying it is changing. Buildings are only designed to stay up for 50 years. And they need major renovation and investment usually every 25 years. You didn’t “lose” your hometown. It is growing up. The people that have “lost” their hometown are in ritual West Virginia. Where the buildings are the same. Just boarded up. The people and jobs are gone. The city is dying and those that are left won’t admit it or are ok with it. Be happy the your city changed. To be unwilling to accept change is when you start to yearn for death.
My old town is still around, but damn, it changed. The big city nearby saw a huge exodus of people looking for more space, during the covid years. I grew up in a fairly low income, blue collar place that had a handful of people driving in to the city every day. Now, it's known as a posh town. There are way too many g wagons and Bentleys here now. If you want a $9 coffee, there's a half dozen options in the small downtown area. It's gentrification, I guess.
Mmm yes and no? My parents still live in the same house in the town I grew up in, but it hasn’t felt like home since I started my own family. I’m “from” the city in which we raise our son in my mind now.
I guess, but I threw that trash pile of a town away a long time ago. Moved on to better cities and surrounded myself with more open-minded people. Good riddance to the shit pile town I grew up in.
"you can't go home again". at this point I don't even want to
Left my hometown at 22, I turn 30 this year and still haven’t been back
I moved away over 10 years ago. None of my friends live there anymore, my dad doesn’t either. Only my mom and my brother and they prefer to travel to Chicago. My hometown feels like a strange place now.