The strange thing about living somewhere for a couple of years

Hear the haunting words of the storyteller, Sarah Pinborough, who wrote: “The strange thing about living somewhere for a couple of years and then moving on and not returning is that those locations become ghosts of themselves in your mind.” These words pierce the soul, for they speak of the passage of time, of memory’s shadows, and of the places that once held our laughter and sorrow but now live only in the chambers of remembrance. They remind us that places, like people, do not remain fixed. When we leave them behind, they cease to be real in the present and become ghosts—phantoms we carry within us.

The meaning is this: every place we dwell in becomes a part of us. Its streets, its walls, its skies—all weave themselves into our lives. But when we move on and never return, we preserve that place not as it is, but as it was. Time continues to flow there, yet in our minds it is frozen, locked in the moment of our departure. The bakery on the corner, the light at sunset, the echo of footsteps in familiar halls—they live as echoes, no longer real but not yet gone. Thus, the world within memory becomes haunted by places that are both ours and not ours anymore.

The ancients knew this strange sorrow. Think of Odysseus, who left Ithaca for war and wandered for twenty years. The Ithaca he carried in his mind was not the same Ithaca he returned to. It had become a ghost of itself in his imagination—a vision preserved in longing. When at last he stood upon its shores, he found both familiarity and strangeness, for the land had changed, and so had he. The Ithaca of his mind and the Ithaca of reality were two different lands, one eternal in memory, the other altered by time.

History too gives us such a tale. When soldiers of the Great War returned home after years abroad, many found their villages unrecognizable. In their minds, they had carried the image of their homes as they had left them—unchanged, unbroken, waiting. Yet reality had shifted. Children had grown, buildings had fallen, and old ways had vanished. The homes they had longed for were no longer the homes they returned to. Thus, the soldiers felt as though they walked in a place both alive and spectral—ghosts of memory and present colliding.

Pinborough’s words also remind us of the fragility of human experience. We do not only lose people when we move on—we also lose places. And though we may think we will return, often we do not. Those classrooms where we once learned, the apartments where we first loved, the streets where we once dreamed—they linger only in memory, like ruins that no eye can see. And so, we carry a secret city within us, a collection of ghost-locations, each frozen in time, each whispering to us that we can never go back, not truly.

The lesson for us is clear: cherish the places of your life while you are within them. Do not rush through them as though they were stepping stones only, for one day they will vanish into memory, and you will not have the chance to see them again as they are now. Walk slowly through familiar streets, look closely at the corners of your home, breathe in the air of your present dwelling. For soon, it too will become a ghost, and you will wish you had looked more deeply.

Practical action must follow. Keep a journal of the places you live. Take time to speak gratitude aloud for the walls that shelter you, the roads you travel daily, the trees and rivers that mark your horizon. When you leave, mark the farewell with reverence, for you are not only leaving behind walls and streets—you are leaving behind a version of yourself who once lived there. Honor both the place and the self it sheltered.

For remember this: the ghosts of places live in us because we once lived in them. They are not to be feared but to be cherished, as reminders of the journey, of the chapters of our story. Walk with reverence, love the places of today, and when you move on, carry their memory not as a wound but as a treasure. For though they fade into phantoms in the world outside, within your soul they will remain eternal.