this post was submitted on 02 Mar 2025
142 points (97.3% liked)
Asklemmy
45414 readers
1507 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- [email protected]: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
“No matter where you go, there you are.”
Made absolutely no sense to me when I was younger. Now, I get that it means changing one’s location or situation in an effort to avoid something doesn’t work. You’re still you, you’re there, and the problem still exists. Obviously some situations can be improved by leaving them, so the statement isn’t completely correct, but there’s plenty of truth to it.
“You can never go home again” also used to bug me, because of course you can physically return to the places you grew up. But if you’ve been away a good while the place you grew up in might have changed, the people will have changed, and you will also have changed. Home will be where you have made a new life. Your old home will be like trying to put on a shoe you haven’t worn in a few years. Yeah, it fits, but it doesn’t feel right. It’s not comfortable like it used to feel. Home isn’t there anymore. I kinda envy some people that I know who never left my hometown. They have the same friends, been hanging out for years, still get together for family stuff…but at the same time I’ve experienced a shitload more than they have. My original home doesn’t exist for me anymore.
"You can never go home again... but you can shop there."
My wife struggles with that second one a lot and I wish I knew how to help her.
Ramble
She's built up this golden fantasy of her childhood and where she's from, and she blames so much of what I file away as "normal life bs" on where we live now. Every time we visit her hometown I see the same problems there that she blames on where we live.She has a hard time seeing the benefits of where we live now because she grew up in a tight knit extended family that closed the gaps so to speak. But that extended family has drifted apart. People have grown up. The old matriarchs and patriarchs have passed. That same tight knit family doesn't exist anymore in the way it used to.
She basically had a high quality, premade social group and support structure just handed to her growing up. She moved states and life events kept getting in the way of her building a new one. But she blames that on location rather than what is now a lack of effort. Issues she overlooked long ago (and still) with family are things she can't let go of when faced with them in potential friends.
And ultimately, the loss of these things just brings her sadness and depression. She's not in a state where she's interested in trying to make it work beyond saying she wants to verbally. Pretty textbook depression but there's complications right now in the way of her seeking help.
Apologies for the ramble/off my chest shit.
Sorry you and your wife are dealing with that. Kinda reminds me of an old saw: within two years of marriage you will move to within two miles of your mother in law. Sounds like maybe that’s what your wife was after with the support structure of family. FWIW “benefits” might be subjective…what one person considers beneficial may not have the same importance to another.