Longing for my childhood

[whatsupwithme2025]

I have no idea what is up with me at the minute.

I have this longing for the days of my childhood. It's crept up on me over time. I was looking at family photographs last night and seeing people who are no longer around really got to me. These people have been gone for a few years now and for some reason the grief hit me like a ton of bricks. All family; grandparents, aunties and uncles, some cousins. I felt sadder looking at these photographs than I did in the initial days/weeks after their passing. Totally out the blue and it has totally floored me. I feel like I am grieving all over again. I've been crying on and off for most of the day.

I visited my hometown (I left about 10 years ago) a few months ago, and I took my family to see the house where I grew up. It is no longer in the family (due to a messy divorce), and I was completely overwhelmed. I just burst into tears. I could not keep the tears in my eyes. Just looking at the house made me feel extremely sad. I have happy memories in the house but the overwhelming emotion was sadness.

After last night's relapse, I have spent the day looking at my old house on Google Maps, looking at the places I used to play, my old school, the walk I used to do with my dad to school. My grandmother's old house etc. I even re-traced a memorable walk my dad, sister and me did one Christmas Eve. All these memories which just seem to be causing me nothing but sadness.

I'm only 45 - what is happening to me???? I hope this passes, it's an awful feeling. Longing for a time that is no more 😔

I’m exactly the same OP

My grandmother died in 1987 but I miss her very much - and only recently had these intense feelings

What is your present day life like? Because I suspect you aren’t happy or fulfilled and you’ve got the rose tinted specs on

I have had episodes like this - although a bit less intense - when I’ve been feeling extremely stressed and unhappy in my present-day life.

I feel similar sometimes. I put it down to how shit life in general has become for everyone. How shit the world is. Things seem so much worse since Covid. It makes me deeply miss happier times and all the people I loved who have died. It passes, but I always have the underlying feeling that so much has gone and I have to make the best of what remains

I’ve had this, but I’m aware the happy childhood I had is what has set me up as a happy adult. So that helps, even when I miss people.
Grief really IS the price of love.
I also try to bear in mind that I’m wearing rose tinted glasses! I grew up with teenage parents and little money so it definitely was not all as terrific as I remember , I’m sure!

I get intense waves of this - desperate cravings for little everyday moments like how my mum would get the bus up to my Infants' school to collect me, home on the bus, lunch, Playschool, and back on the bus for the afternoon, all within an hour. How she kept that up for three years, I don't know! Or Monday mornings at home with her in the holidays - the smell of warm rubber from the twin tub in the kitchen, watching it empty through a hose into the sink. My dad coming home from work and beeping his horn as he passed the front of the house, so I could run down the side to meet him. I've lost them both now and I miss them so much. My childhood best friend's dad passed away last week and that's set off another wave of longing - we were in and out of each other's houses all day every day during the summer holidays, probably driving each other's parents mad, but they were unfailingly kind to me, and my parents to her. I just want a day ticket back to the late 70s and a day off from work and general adulting, I think.

It sounds like a bout of nostalgia, in the true sense of the word. I often feel this way, even though my adult life is very happy!

Just something that hits us as we grow older! According to my grandad the whole world has gone to shit, and the olden days were better… even his crappy, poverty stricken childhood ( simpler times! We didn’t need much!) and the war where he was drafted, permanently wounded and lost his brother( we all pulled together…etc)