How do you feel when you revisit places where you have amazing memories?

[LaFemmeFatale_1]

After 2.5 years away I eventually went back to China and I’ve been working part-time in the same place where I lived and worked earlier. I live in a different district now though.

Everyday when I go to my part-time job, I visit the places where I have memories about the every corner, I had lots of my firsts there.

Today I went out of the office and felt the smell of the air that smelled the same as I remembered it from years ago. I remembered myself walking with my first love during the quarantine, I remembered our home which was 500 meters away, I remembered how we walked, laughed and loved exactly on the same street as I am today, but that he is not there anymore.

The distantly sad thought came to me that 3 years ago today I wouldn’t imagine I would walk here alone.

However, I breathed in the air and felt that I feel peaceful with my past. And those memories no longer awaken pain in me instead just a distant reflection of my own happiness, as if I see my past as a movie scene happening right in front of my eyes, I remember every word and every laugh we shared on that streets. And yet, strangely enough that’s all in the past, in another reality.

How weird it is that at those places I was my happiest and today there’s only a memory left from what I used to think would be my lifelong love story.

But I also feel very happy today walking in those streets alone. I felt peaceful and happy that I am here and I don’t know where I’ll be tomorrow.

Is this how moving on feels like?

[Anonymous]

The city I grew up in I occasionally visit on stop overs and buisness trips. I was homeless during my early teens before joining the Marines and left. I had a girlfriend who was a few years younger than me, she came from a bad home and was bounced around Foster homes and she decided she wasn't going back. She was 14 when I met her, I was 17. We hit it of and lived together as a couple staying in various abandoned houses, factories and even an old sewer. Best two years of my life. She was so beautiful and very smart, best two years of my life, she used to cry when she had an orgasm and I'd just hold her. I've so many memories like that, of us surviving together. Anyway I got arrested for a fight someone started with me and was locked up over the weekend but when I got out she was gone and nobody knew where, I searched the city day and night. Police just ignored it until she turned up floating in the dirty river a week later she had been rape, tortured and beaten to death. I have the best memories just walking past places we used to be, we were always together every day. She was my best friend and she was my wife. She was an angel, she looked out for me, she was fiercely loyal, we never argued once and she always had a smile nothing brought her down despite all she had been through. She was a too trusting though, too naive and a terrible judge of charcter and I suspect this is what led to her death.

They never got her killer but they got a guy for a similar murder in another state that they suspect did it because it matches his mo and he was in the city at the time.

[msc545]

Depends on what memories I have. Some make me cry.

[LaFemmeFatale_1]

The first few months I cried too… Now I smile.

However, I have not been to my old home. I believe I should keep that place untouchable, I lived with my ex fiancé there. I want that memory to stay pure, I want me to remember those places as I remembered them when I lived with him years ago. So I don’t go to the second part of the street, I don’t want to create new memories of me walking alone there.

They should stay as they used to be. I also didn’t go to a Sakura garden where I had my first kiss. It’s just 100 m away from my office, but I don’t want to go there. Some things are better being left untouched.

[msc545]

You are right - some things are best left untouched indeed. That said - sometimes I have mixed feelings about some memories and I decide to experience them again - and I sometimes regret doing that.