Missing places/times instead of people

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Both Temple Grandin and Dawn Prince-Hughes have mentioned this, so I know it's common. I do it sometimes... sometimes when I get sad thinking about other times in my life it isn't the people I miss but the places, and I don't know how to express this without people thinking I'm weird or insensitive or thoughtless. Like-- sometimes, when I think about my first partner (who died) and our life in Atlanta, more than I miss her I miss Atlanta itself. I miss our apartment. I miss our neighborhood. I want to be back there, not so much because I want to be with her as because I want to be THERE. I loved that place and I miss it. I'm not saying I never miss her. But sometimes I miss places too. And not just those ones...

i can totally relate to this. Its like you miss the way that moment made you feel. the way 4pm on a july afternoon in a particular place can make you feel. Its not the people i was with or what we were doing I think its knowing that I could never recreate that feeling. I would refer to it as the feeling of 4pm 07-10-00, not happy sad or content. Just the smells of the day and the temperature and the essence of that time, the placement of the sun in the sky, the colors of the sky, the air pressure, etc etc. Thats how i feel.

Yes, yes, yes!

I didn't know others were like this. I don't miss the few friends I have, but I miss being at their house. For some reason I feel differently in every change of enviornment. For instance, I could play a videogame better at one location then another. Sometimes I don't like going to visit a friend because I don't like the environment.

When my grandparents moved out of town I was most upset about not visiting the HOUSE anymore. Now, 15 years later, I make a point of passing by that house and taking a good look at it. I also daydream about buying it one day.

I don't know how people can't do this...I find I can fall in love with a place, my surroundings at a certain time, just as much as with a person. Sometimes it's just not who I'm with...it's were I'm at that makes a lasting impression.

Me too. Some places have more personality than some people.

Yes. And I find it deeply disturbing when places change, though they always do.

My most fond memories of childhood focus on the place I grew up, not the people.

Yes I do this too. Sometimes I even go as far as attemting to reconstruct moments in my life that made me happy by surrounding myself with things that reminded me of that time. The objects, the smells, the foods I ate. I try to get as much of it right as I can. Of course it doesn't make me feel the same, but it reminds me of the feeling I had at the time, and that makes me feel...I don't know, nostalgic? Secure?

Sometimes I catch myself missing specific times in my life, like the summer of '05 when my favorite animes were Naruto and One Piece, and I listened to Aqua every time I went for a run. Or the Christmas season of '06, when my mom burned pine-scented candles.

I miss places and times too. Sometimes songs or smells will remind me of them.

I associate things with locations... I'll remember where I was sitting when I learned something, and it will make it easier for me to remember what it was that I learned. Or I'll hear something, and I remember where I was when I heard it first.

I feel the same way about my past. A smell will remind me of a time when things were a certain way. I'll miss the whole package (the apartment, the city, the friends I had) not just a person. It's hard to describe that to other people without sounding detached from my emotions.

I miss the time that London's streets were still heavily populated with Routemasters. I used to dream about visiting that London. I have little desire to travel to the new London.

Oh, definitely. I don't miss the people but sometimes I remember the times and places so vividly that I actually stop and lurch with pain.

Even if they were so called "dark times" or "worst of times" and I hated where I was.

bittersweet pain.

Same here. I was always the last to hang around in the school building when everybody else had gone home*, the one to stay behind in the barracks, wandering the empty corridors in my tracksuit and slippers, when the other soldiers went out for a drink. These days, I will often revisit old haunts on my Sunday walks. I'm fascinated by places more than by people, which is why I keep dreaming of being the last man alive on earth.


*I even wrote a song about this when I was eighteen, called "Why They All Run Away".

I have that happen sometimes, or something similar. Rather than missing a particular person, I'll miss the feeling of when we were together - it's not just about them, but also about the place and the time and the conversation and the state of mind. All of it together.