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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To ask if you were able to go back in time, even just for an hour, would you?

46 replies

101problems · 09/05/2020 04:01

Let's pretend we live in a world where we all had a button. It could only be used once, and upon pressing it could never be used again. But upon activation you'd have the opportunity to go back in time, to rewrite personal history, even only if for a relatively brief moment.

Considering your life now, would you press it?

After some recent bereavements I've thought a lot about how I would like to, but obviously life doesn't work like that. On the other hand, perhaps our lives work best knowing that life is not a rehearsal, and we can live with regret and learn from it, but never rewrite them.

OP posts:
aLilNonnyMouse · 09/05/2020 04:12

I'd visit the night my best friend killed himself. I typed out a message to start a chat with him, decided I was too tired to get into a 3 hour chat with him (we always talked for hours), saved the message and went to sleep.

By the time I woke up he was dead.

If I could go back I'd send that message - I can't know of it would have changed anything but I can't stop thinking about the "what it's". Even if it didn't work I'd finally get some closure around it.

turquoiseplates · 09/05/2020 04:14

I'd have stayed with my Dad instead of going home. Then he'd have had someone with him when he died.

Reallymissthegym · 09/05/2020 04:17

I’d be afraid I’d go back to change the course of time and I’d make it even worse. I wouldn’t have left the hospital when my nan died. I left and she died 40 minutes later. I would have liked to have held her hand.

Honeybee85 · 09/05/2020 04:23

I would go back to the time when I was a teenager and beat up one of the bullies who made my life so miserable during my school years. Wonder if I had done that it would have made a difference.

I would have said no when my ex asked me out on a first date. Would have saved me a lot of misery.

I would visit my grandmother before she fell down and moved to a retirement home and enjoy one last time to have a cup of hot chocolate with her in her lovely home that I have so many happy childhood memories of.

Alyic · 09/05/2020 04:30

I would go back to spend an hour with my Dad, he died 30 years ago he was 58. He was lovely, kind and interesting and fought like a lion to live.

rawlikesushi · 09/05/2020 04:31

I would relive the conversation in which I persuaded dp to take the new job, since that is where he met ow and our little family was subsequently blown apart.

I would have been less impatient with my grandma, in her last coherent conversation.

I would have got a taxi instead of walking home on the night I was attacked.

I'm going to need three goes at this button.

Original poster
101problems · 09/05/2020 04:43

I think it's only when you've experienced a number of difficult times when you truly appreciate the whole 'hindsight is a wonderful thing'.

I've had family bereavements over the last month, including my nan who I was very close to. But I also had a very vivid dream concerned with childhood traumas a few days ago and it left me thinking.

I guess it's one of those things about life. If you always thought about how you could maybe change the past, you'd never live in the present. But it doesn't really make it easier.

OP posts:
Anon55533 · 09/05/2020 05:48

I’ve thought about this a lot especially after watching butterfly effect. I would go back to when I was in primary school and tell someone what was going on at home with me and hope I would have been taken away. Or I would go back as an adult now and talk to my younger self and explain life will get better and I need to know it’s not okay for this to be happening to me and I do not deserve to be treated like this. I wish I could give myself the comfort and love I needed and wish I could have been stronger and told someone.

@rawlikesushi - I’m so sorry you went through what you did. It would be lovely if we could have this option wouldn’t it

GlummyMcGlummerson · 09/05/2020 05:50

I'd go back to before i had kids, to an old holiday, and just air on the beach for an hour. Less risk of the Butterfly Effect and I get a short spell of peace Grin

recrudescence · 09/05/2020 05:56

I’d buy the winning lottery ticket.

Oblomov20 · 09/05/2020 06:01

Yes. I'd change an event a few years ago. And my behaviour on the years that led up to it.
Unfortunately I can't change others behaviour. I begged for help for years and was ignored.

Lanurk · 09/05/2020 06:02

My first answer was that I’d go back to the night my brother killed himself and I’d intervene but thinking about it I think I’d maybe be better going back to the point in my childhood where everything went to shit and warning my mum what would happen if she made the choices she did. I could go see my younger self in the next room and brace myself for what would happen and maybe prewarn myself to be prepared.

ShowerOfShite · 09/05/2020 06:19

I'd go back and decide to stay where I was, not move.

isabellerossignol · 09/05/2020 06:24

I'd go back and not post my UCAS form and not waste my time going to university.

LakieLady · 09/05/2020 06:42

I'd go back to my wedding day and not marry my ex. He put me through years of hell and the divorce cost me a small fortune, I had to give him nearly half the equity in my house.

Oysterbabe · 09/05/2020 06:43

I don't live near my family. My mum went into hospital with a chest infection and was diagnosed with leukaemia. She started chemo straight away and was due to be in hospital for at least a month for the first round. She told me not to rush to visit, she had my siblings and dad there daily and would be in hospital a long time. So I organised a weeks annual leave for the following week. She died suddenly 2 days later. I guess if I could go back in time I would have dropped everything and gone straight to her so I could have seen her again before she died.

Isawamagpie · 09/05/2020 06:58

I'd go back to a conversation I had with my ex H about splitting up. I'd actually open up and say, you know what? I'm struggling with all the stuff we've been through in our young marriage, i don't want to push you away but I dont know how to articulate all the pain we've been through (infertility, botched operations, ivf etc) - the only reason I'm telling you I dont want you is because I can't get my head around why you'd want me when I'm so broken. I dont want to split up, I just need some help."

I belive if I could have just opened up, or had some support, or someone to tell me that its OK, our marriage would have stood. I was only mid 20s.

Now we have a broken home and my son goes between two families, and ex H has a very strange and manipulate gf and has lost most of his friends and our relationship can be difficult because of it.

All very sad.

SnowsInWater · 09/05/2020 06:59

I would spend an hour with my mum in her favourite cafe drinking tea and eating lemon meringue pie. She died 18 years ago. It is Mother's Day here in Aus tomorrow so I always miss her more then.

Isawamagpie · 09/05/2020 07:00
  • because of the situation not because he's lost friends

Lol

CloudsCanLookLikeSheep · 09/05/2020 07:20

I'd go back to accepting a job offer, I was extremely happy at the time but it turned out to be the wrong job for me and it buggered up my career.

I'd stay longer where I was and only go for bigger roles. I sold myself short due to not believing in myself, regret that now.

31133004Taff · 09/05/2020 07:35

@Isawamagpie and @Clouds

I think these posts are the essence of this thread; change one decision that has directly impacted on your life. I too took a job that seriously buggered up my life. I wouldn’t need an hour, only the time it would have taken to have said ‘no thank you.’

If I could go back for an hour, it would be when my 2dd were 3 and 5 and the madness of getting us out of the house to nursery, school and work. I loved them so much but the stress and intensity of this task day after suggested otherwise. I would stop and give them the biggest hug but selfishly so that feeling of how much I loved them and wanted to nurture them would stay with me and sustain me through the storm of teenage years and marital breakdown. But just writing this brought that feeling out. 💐

Connie222 · 09/05/2020 07:40

I’d go back to the night I met my husband and leave well alone, go to another pub.

I’d still be in my first marriage, I wouldn’t have fucked up my Ds life and ruined mine.

Choctimeout · 09/05/2020 07:41

Hard to say as some of the worst mistakes in my life ended up leading to my wonderdul dc.

If it was guaranteed that I would have exactly the same dc at exactly the same time then I guess I'd go back to being 5 and live my whole life over.

I'd start early and be considered a physics genuis instead of having to go back to education later due to undiagnosed autism Grin.

Connie222 · 09/05/2020 07:41

@Isawamagpie my story was pretty much the same. Should have stayed.

Eminybob · 09/05/2020 07:42

I made a few bad decisions when I was younger, and although I’d like to change what happened at that time, I know I only have the life I have now because of the way those events changed my path. So if I changed anything I’d lose my dh and dc so I wouldn’t do that.

I may go back to 7 years ago when I bought my money pit of a house and buy a different one.

Or go back to the last big euromillions draw with the winning numbers. Sounds materialistic but money could solve so many of mine and my loved ones problems.