Is there a period in your life you yearn to go back to?

[Dappy777]

Do you feel any yearning or nostalgia for the past? Is there a time you long to go back to? Do you ever get drunk and feel tearful because those days are gone forever?

I’ve always wondered how common such nostalgia really is. In particular, do people yearn to go back to their teens? My father was a very sentimental and nostalgic man. He used to go on and on about his teenage years - the fun and the parties and so on. I grew up assuming everybody felt that way except me, and that I was an oddity (I hated my teens and twenties).

Yes, I do reminisce about my time when I was a student nurse, living in the nurses home and having 3 nights a week out clubbing in Bradford and Leeds. Great mates, cheap booze and the strength of youth.

I used to wonder why my mum rambled on so much about the Land Army given she was only in for 2 years and at the very end of the war, but now I get that 'glory days' feeling.

14 to 17.

My late teens, early 20’s.
for two reasons; it was before I developed crippling general and health anxiety, and it’s when I met DH and we were super social, always out, had great fun together. Now I feel like all we do is decide who’s doing what part of the kids routine for that day and who’s cooking, who’s put the washing on ect 😭 I want young us back.

Yes. When i was working and well and my mum was alive and all my family were still on good terms.
But i would have some people that are in my life now, i will take them back with me...

Nope, not at all. I can’t think of anything worse than been young again. I’d like less grey hair and to look less knackered but I’ve never really been one for reminiscing about the past. It’s like a different life.

Yes - teens & early 20s. It was just such fun! Nothing was really planned too much in advance, just went with the flow. I remember setting off with an Interrail ticket for a month in Europe with no idea at all where we would be going. No trains booked, no rooms booked & no fixed route. Obviously no phone in the early 90s. Also I miss the children being toddlers. Time has flown by so quickly.

Yes, early 20s. I'd have done that time onwards so differently, chosen a different partner, job etc.

Yes, I'd love to go back to just before I feel pregnant with my first. I'd love to relive all of the newborn and toddler years for each of my children.

The newborn baby years. They were bliss.

basically this 🥺

I'd like to go back to my twenties, not because I was having lots of fun, but because I wasn't. I'm so sad I wasted that part of my life on misery, so I would go back and do it all very differently.

Yes I’d love to relive my teenage years and early twenties and have more sex with more men, and have more fun in general - lots more clubbing.

I’d also love to go back to my late twenties to one particular moment with a man for which the attraction was mutual but we were both unavailable, and this time I wouldn’t hold back.

I also miss having sick days as a child at home with my parents and feeling so loved and protected, with the smell of a meat pie and vegetables cooking and me under the duvet on the sofa with the taste of Calpol in my mouth.

Yes, 16 or 17. I'd have done things differently, knowing what I know now.

17-20 were good years, new friends and experiences, lots of potential.

I do look back and miss lots of times in my life but I don’t want to go back as I also like where I am now. It’s different, not as exciting and I’m working harder than ever with lots of responsibilities but I love being with my own family.

Student years. Oh to have all those days again with time and freedom and no real worries. And health to enjoy it.

And yes, with the eyes of experience would make a lot of different choices second time around.

My gap year was fantastic, but other that that, no.

I’m living my dream life now (sorry if cheesy/smug!)

I would go back to when I was an adult student at college, working part-time on a particular farm. Even my diaries indicate that it was the happiest time of my life. Unfortunately, they could not afford to employ me full-time, but perhaps that is a good thing, as I would still be living in a caravan on their driveway years later! I still go back and visit (and usually end up helping with something, like lambing) when I am that way on.

I definitely wouldn't go back to my teens. I hated school, and when people told me, "Your schooldays will be the best days of your life!" I always used to think, "You mean it gets worse?!" Thankfully, it was all lies!

I hated my teens and 20s. Nothing traumatic happened, I just wasn’t suited to being young (too introverted and anxious). I have got happier and happier with age. Mainly because I no longer care what people think of me. The awful shame has gone. But I hate the aching joints and sagging face. I definitely wouldn’t want to be a teenager again, but I would like the tech gurus in Silicon Valley to hurry up with the age reversing drugs. To be 60 or 70 with the body of a 25-year- old would be perfect.

Despite being a 90s aholic I'd go back to the year 2000. It feels like the last bastion of innocence before the world changed for good.

Also 2012. The people I love the most were all healthy, alive and here. Before they died/moved away/hurt me beyond words. And the vibe of the country from June to September was made of magic.

I think I might be in my favourite bit now to be honest. Sorry if that sounds smug. We have no health or money worries atm, kids getting easier and all happy, no teenage angst yet. Parents and friends we love alive and well. Exciting holidays on the horizon.
There is something very special about newborns, but on balance I’ll take 2026 please.
I am 10 x happier than I was in my teens and twenties, much more confident in myself now (despite in need of losing 2 stone) and giving less of a fuck what other people think every year!

Yes and no.

Yes, to the days long ago when I did catalogue modelling. I look like Nora Batty now.

No, because now I’m happier and more financially secure than I’ve ever been.

I have a vague nostalgia for childhood. I grew up in the countryside (born 1976), and my memory of the early ‘80s is very warm and glowy. To this day I love old TV footage of the early ‘80s. I was able to roam freely about the fields (now covered in hideous housing estates), and was lost in a world of my own.

It snowed a lot when I was a kid, and my memories of childhood are all, weirdly, winter based. I have vivid memories of freshly ploughed fields, and of the deep furrows white and hard with frost or snow. We had an old coal fire, and childhood, to me, is a mix of snow, ice, glowing coal, Robins in the garden, an old spaniel, Roald Dahl and Enid Blyton and Narnia, endlessly re-watching Mary Poppins on a clunky old VHS tape, and just being happy. I think my happiest memory, actually, is of being read to. Above all, I remember being read Roald Dahl and C S Lewis’ Narnia stories.

Oh, and those magical Oliver Postgate TV shows.

I’d love to be 17-27 basically pre kids to have some fun. 3 annd 6 so in the trenches I feel with one ND. I’m sure in 20 years I will wish to be back where I am today so I try and remember that ❤️

Newborn baby years with Dm and DF still alive so I could pop round for a cup of tea.