Nc for this.
I grew up in a city, let’s call it city A. Met DH when I was a teenager, who is from city B. The two cities are only about 40 mins apart. When I was a teenager and in my 20s, I definitely saw city B as much more aspirational and cooler than my home city, and when DH and I got married, we bought a house in city B. We both still work in city B so it is more convenient to live here for work. Now we live just outside city B in a very “naice” area which is seen as fairly prestigious, although I’ve never really felt the area was “me” but we have a lovely home and friends locally and our dc are settled in school (early secondary) .
However, more and more I feel a yearning to go back to city A. I have felt like this for a few years. My parents live there so we do go there fairly often and we are also big supporters of the football club of city A (I know some people won’t get this but it is quite a big deal!). City A is also undergoing a bit of a renaissance with lots of investment and is becoming quite cool. I feel a strange sort of guilt towards it, as if it has taken me too long to realise what a special place it is. I have got a bit obsessed by it. I follow social media accounts about it and go on local forums, more than I do for my own area!
I feel ashamed that I moved away when I was growing up and thought i was too good for it. I realise what an idyllic childhood and adolescence I had growing up there. If I hear people from city B making lighthearted jokes about city A, I feel defensive and annoyed in a way that wouldn’t have bothered me in the past. I can’t explain it, but I feel a real longing for it. People would think i was nuts to feel this way as it’s perceived as quite a gritty place and very different to the area I live in now.
The other thing that has happened is that my dear dad has recently become terminally ill. So I feel like a lot of my feelings about city A are bound up in this too. We have had lots of conversations recently about him growing up there, the pubs where he and my mum went in the 1970s and all his memories of the place. This has definitely increased the feeling I have about the city but I was having these feelings anyway.
I feel like I can’t decide if these feelings are just silly, rooted in nostalgia and sentiment, given my dads circumstances at the minute, or something I should actually act upon, dh would think it was totally madness to move to city A now, and uproot ourselves when we are settled and happy where we are, with dc in school. It is only 40 mins away after all! But I can’t help feeling this longing to move. Facing the prospect of my parents mortality, i find it hard to imagine not having a concrete link to city A like I do now. I feel like without that I would feel weird and untethered. I sometimes think about moving back in the future, maybe when dc have left home.
I guess what I’m asking is has anyone experienced this kind of thing before? Did it pass? Or did anyone make the move? Am I being totally irrational because of what is happening with my dad?