Nostalgia makes me sad

[imSatanhonest]

Over the past few years I have found that, at times, feeling nostalgic about the past makes me feel really sad. Especially so when watching music videos. The channel that shows Top of The Pops from a selected year (it's the early to mid 80s ones I can't watch). I have to turn it off and now purposely won't watch it because I'll know I'll just feel sad. It's always music that makes me feel this way. Anything from about '85 onwards I can watch (I was 11/12) then.

I've tried to unpick WHY it makes me sad. I guess it's the mixture of how I felt at the time - young (I would have been 8/9/10 then) care-free, excited for the future, - mixed with a sadness that I'll never feel that way again and feeling sad for the naivety of the innocence, of not knowing what a shitshow some of my teenage years would turn out to be. That's the only way I can think to describe it, in its most basic form.

I have a happy life, 3DCs, single mum and a good job and, despite describing some of my teenage years as a shit show, if I had my time over again, I wouldn't change a thing or do anything differently as it's made me who I am today.

Is it just me, is it an age thing? Do other people feel sad when looking back on a happy time in their young life?

I feel exactly the same sometimes. It's not always one particular thing that sets it off either, sometimes I just have an aching longing for the past. I look at photos from when I was a child and wish I could climb inside them, sometimes. Sometimes it's a nice feeling but other times I could cry.

Yes - I'm a similar age to you and there are many songs I avoid because they'll make me too emotional. So many things change irrevocably - they can no longer be recreated - people are dead, places are gone.

Yes - that's an aspect of it I couldn't put into words. Thank you

Me too. Sometimes I'm absolutely fine - can sing, dance along, smile at the memories. But most of the time there's just an aching sadness.

Songs from my teenage years, those emotional, angst-ridden, everything's a massive issue years, and a couple of those years which were particularly upsetting - I'm absolutely fine with the nostalgia. I just don't understand how I feel sad about the happy times but don't get sad about the sad times!

By definition nostalgia is a feeling of pain - pain of longing for something from the past. It's normal, I feel sad thinking about the happiest of times with friends and family.

The Welsh have a word: hiraeth. I think it fits what you're describing. www.bbc.com/travel/article/20210214-the-welsh-word-you-cant-translate

I have that, I call it timesickness. Like homesickness but for a time or a memory.

Yes it’s a sad feeling, but sort of more bittersweet for me - I enjoy the memories as well as feeling sad that those times have past. I get sooo nostalgic for my childhood Christmases and it brings a tear to my eye but I can also smile about the good times we had.

iheartgenehunt you have described exactly how I feel sometimes. I hear songs from the 80s and 90s and I go straight back to where I was when I used to listen to those things. Everything felt easier, more carefree. Better in so many ways. My mum and dad were so young, my grandparents were still here. It’s always Christmas in so many of those memories, always Christmas in my nans little kitchen in her council house, the best place in the world. Everyone is there, all the people we’ve lost are still alive and still so full of life. I can hear it all, smell it all. I would do anything to go back to those days.

This.
I long for the happiness of my childhood again. I was young, carefree, no responsibilities & had my whole life in front of me. Life was easy. I long so much for the people who have now passed & the places that no longer exist. I often take a drive around my city and visit old places that hold memories. My grandparents former house (they've been gone 35 years), a house we used to live in. I might do that today after reading this thread.
I'm 51 and the 80s and early 90s were my prime. The fun times I had back then. Nothing has come close to it since. Things were simple. Christmas the whole family came together. Now, the family that are left don't come together. We all have separate lives and commitments in terms of children, in laws etc.
I can't look at old photos without crying. Crying for good times that will never happen again. Crying for the loss of family. Crying for my childhood that I will never get back. Crying for getting older. Crying for my parents who are now older and less able to do things.

I'm now Crying!
As for songs and music videos- they also set me off. Songs which hold memories. Music videos from the 80s which remind me of how we used to be.
Time and the world has moved on. But I would do anything to go back to the 80s again

And this too

So many posts here I feel I could have written word for word myself!

I often take a drive around my city and visit old places that hold memories. My grandparents former house (they've been gone 35 years), a house we used to live in.

I recently found the former houses of both sets of grandparents on Rightmove. They had both been remodelled inside to be almost unrecognisable, but there were little bits here and there - a distinctive curved ceiling in one house, the view from the window in the other - that brought everything back.

My sense of hiraeth gets more intense in me every year. The gaps left by people no longer here, the pull to a place in history to which you can't return, the warmth of a big family of kind grandparents, Sunday teas and family around the telly. I walk around the church yard where we married and remember the big noisy crowd of happy smiling faces that were there that day. It's our 34th wedding anniversary today and so many of the people who were there are gone. The world seems crazy right now and the longing for those happy times and loving people is even stronger. For me the best way to make sense of it all is to make the most of the times and people I have now because the years melt like snow.

It's kind of the point of nostalgia isn't it?

Life is a series of small griefs!

@moggerhanger Thank you for introducing me to the word 'hiraeth'.

From the article you linked - it's that exact thing we are all talking about:

"Hiraeth is often likened to nostalgia in English or saudade in Portuguese, and it shares qualities with the German concept of sehnsucht, but none quite match exactly. It combines elements of homesickness, nostalgia and longing. Interlaced, however, is the subtle acknowledgment of an irretrievable loss – a unique blend of place, time and people that can never be recreated. This unreachable nature adds an element of grief, but somehow it is not entirely unwelcome."

I was just thinking this myself - mid 50's. Music from the 70's, 80's particularly sets me off. I had a hard childhood but so many amazing, fun times too. I like to remember them but find it inexplicably painful too.

I feel exactly the same and it's the reason I don't enjoy music at all. I never listen to music. I wish I could feel the happiness that other people seem to feel when they hear music but for me it only brings sadness. I thought there was something wrong with me so I'd rather relieved to see that others do feel the same as me!

Yes, I'm the same, I get all of that.

It's now coupled with the strange feeling of responsibility that right now, this is what will be my kids nostalgia. They will be looking back on the 2020s in 40+ years and having all these feelings / memories.

Which is strange to think about and I feel a sense of burden and a sense of guilt that it's not as "good" as my memories of the 80s.

Such is life, I guess.

I live far from the village I grew up in but when I go back to visit remaining family I always get a big achy lump in my throat and chest. I was only a schoolchild in the 1980s but I remember it being such a happy time. We could play out in the fields with friends and our parents never worried. Tv shows were lighthearted and music was memorable. Christmas she's were a big, exciting family event with grandparents, cousins and jolly uncles, and we always went to a family friends house for a new year party. I miss those days. I think you get sad about the happy times because you want them again. You don't feel sad thinking about the sad times because you don't want them back.

I often watch the colourised videos from a hundred years ago or dims from the 20s/30/40s and sometimes a particular person stands out and I wonder how their life turned out and how old did they live for.

Usually I find it very interesting but sometimes there is a feeling of sadness about which I can’t pinpoint exactly why.

This type of thing -

I used to feel exactly like this about songs from my teenage years and early twenties. I couldn't listen to them at all and rejected them. Turned the radio off. Put on anything, even The Archers, instead. Preferred stuff from the early 80s when I was a small child. Lately I have found I can listen to it again. I don't know why, but I am more accepting of my teenage shitshow years and can look back on them quite fondly even though I'd never go back!! It took years to feel like that, and maybe my daughter becoming a teenager sparked some of the nicer memories again in me about those years. Yes I made (many) mistakes and was generally an angsty nightmare but it was an era in time that belongs to me. Maybe in time you'll feel the same.OP but I do understand feeling like that.

Yes it's a fascinating subject. It was the topic of my Music MA dissertation - memories (particularly autobiographical ones) evoked by music and the relationship to nostalgia or longing. Music, like smell, can be a powerful vehicle through which we reconnect to events and people in our past. This is bittersweet for reasons already cited in the thread.

I don't have time to read this properly so I'm place marking but i suffer hugely from this. OH will put on a song and it will just break my heart. He doesn't get it and i can't explain it. As a result i have more contemporary interests!

Yes totally get all of this. 52 and 70s 80s 90s hold such great memories it’s painful. How do we stop it feeling so sad ?