Drove past my old apartment today..and cried

[Lifeswhatyoumakeit77]

First apartment I rented, first home with now dh..abroad.
Drove past today with parents and they started talking about it and the things we used to do, I stopped the car and cried, big, sobs.
Felt a little embarrassed
It was 19 years ago, I wouldn’t want to live there now. I have a larger house, nice garden, lovely young Dd
I remembered those days in the tiny one bedroom apartment, sat drinking wine and listening to music on the tiny balcony in the heat, eating pasta with tuna most days as we were so skint…and I balled my eyes out and almost couldn’t stop.
Is this normal

Anyone else ever feel/felt like this?

No

Well I sometimes get nostalgic about our first home. We were skint and happy, but now we are comfortable and happy. I miss childfree days but I still experienced them and have all the lovely memories and no one can take that away. I'm not sure I can imagine bawling.

Um no, but you feel like that, and thats ok. Do you want us to help you unpack why? Or do you want like minded company?

I sometimes look up on Google Maps the old flat ex-H and I shared, where our eldest DC was born. We rented it but it's since been tarted up and sold (for £500k, about 8 years ago). It looks much better than when we lived there but I still think of it as it was and have very happy memories of it.

Not to the point of balling my eyes out. But, for me, whenever I get nostalgic, I do get pretty sad. It's like the death of an experience/time in your life. You remember it, but you can never get it back.

I totally get this.
I am so emotional and sentimental about things. The last time we moved house I cried my eyes out at leaving the house which we’d made our home and was the site of so many memories even though I used to moan about the house incessantly when we lived there!

I think it’s perfectly normal! Places are linked with memories and it’s only human to react to that.

That’s summed it up perfectly - exactly how I feel

I can feel emotional when I think about my first place, where life seemed full of possibilities. Personally, I feel a bit sick when I go nostalgic. You happen to blub. I reckon our responses get a bit confused at times like that.

I do sort of get this. We moved from our first rented house and about 6 months later it and all the others were found to be structurally unsound (something about erosion I think) so they tore them all down.

I walked past it often and the one day I walked by they’d taken the front wall off in the middle of demolition and I could see directly into ‘my’ bedroom with my lovely brightly painted wall and I cried like a baby right there in the street.

Awww I get it, OP
Memories from another time , but great ones .

I visit the past sometimes and feel just how you did .

It shocked me how it just hit me..have driven past before a few times and felt nostalgic but sort of blocked it out/forced myself not to get upset. I’m a sentimental person..but this was like a bolt from the blue.
I don’t know, I seem to be very aware of time passing in the last couple of years, perhaps it’s age

I understand completely! I am also sentimental which isn’t much fun sometimes. We moved a few months ago from our lovely home and have downsized. It’s been quite sad but I am doing better!