To feel in complete denial about the passage of time?

[FloralLove]

Does anyone else find themselves feeling completely in denial about the passage of time? I really struggle in being present and I feel like life is just passing me by. I feel like I barely connect with what day of the week it is, let alone month, season, year, etc. I struggle with accepting what stage of life and age I am at. I am in my mid 20s and I feel like it is something I need to rapidly get my head around before more of life passes me by.

I feel like deep down I feel like I will get a second chance at everything. I know that is wrong but I cannot shake that belief and it is affecting the way I treat my days, weeks, months and years.

I read a book and it mentioned death anxiety and one of the ways it manifests is with the belief that "so long as I do not enter the game, the clock has not begun to tick" (Nathaniel Branden, Honoring the Self, p.193). I feel like that is how I treat my life. I haven't let myself "start" it yet even though it already has started and is going by without me. I find it strange that some milestones/seasons of life have already gone by for me - being at school, being at university, graduating. It feels like those were just practice runs when that obviously isn't the case. I have felt like this for as long as I can remember. I remember being 10 and thinking I would never go to secondary school, I would just start back at reception and go through primary school again.

Does anyone else feel like this? Also I want to apologise in advance for coming across as naive and for taking time for granted. I know it is silly and foolish and that is why I am trying to process why I am like this so I can make a change.

I agree that it's never too late to change, improve, discard, whatever you need to do 🤷

@AbsentmindedWoman - I take it you didn't see it, I think of the conditions were that you had to do really good pastry ...

I don't know where the time goes!

I read ages ago about a order of priests (or something similar) which is all about death and how it makes them happier as they embrace life. I know it sounds the wrong way around, but thinking about the fleetingness of life can make you appreciate it more. I get that this may not work for everyone!

I bring you the Buddhist Five Remembrances, I have this as a reminder on my phone every morning (there's also an app called WeCroak which reminds you several times a day with quotes). Bizarrely, even though it would seem depressing, it's actually made me happier:

"I will grow old.
I cannot escape aging.

I will become sick.
I cannot escape illness.

I will die.
I cannot escape death.

Everyone I love and cherish will change.
I cannot escape being separated from them.

My actions are my only belongings.
I cannot escape the consequences of my actions"

An App called "WeCroak"?! I must see this!

I have a similar-but-opposite sort of thing, in that I've spent my life convinced this is my "last" run of it, which doesn't make any sense unless there were others.

As a child, I remember having the sort of grumpy, recurring thought from my earliest years - "this again? really?" , progressing into reassuring inner thoughts - it doesn't matter, this is the last time, take every drop of the experience now, you won't ever come back here.

That train of thought has followed me throughout adult life, has made me really open up to and appreciate the good times, and also weirdly 'pay attention' to the bad times to understand those feelings better too.

I feel done with life. I've felt done with it from the beginning. I'm not depressed, I just feel like I've got everything I can. I'm grateful for the experience but it feels like the last page of a book... the story is all ended and it's just pleasant winding-down words.

The underlying implication (and feeling) is that I have already done it over and over again many times, and maybe I have, maybe we do. Consciousness and time have a mysterious relationship.

I'm 40 next year, which blows me away. I feel like I have always been waiting for my life to start. I think for me it is because so much of my childhood and young adulthood was painful and difficult, so it was like I expected some kind of amazing happiness to arrive when I finally escaped that. But it didn't.

I was living for the weekend, which meant I wanted to fast forward the week to get to those two days. When you think about how many hours I wished away, it is astounding. I think the change for me came when I was diagnosed with a chronic, incurable disease and realised that there may not always be a tomorrow. It isn't terminal, but it does affect my life and also, could shorten it if the medication doesn't work properly.

I started with small steps. I use the best china, I wear that amazing dress, I threw out those clothes I always meant to slim into. I started planning trips and events, I ate that last brownie that I wanted. I still sometimes feel like I am on stage in someone else's play, but I find that I am starting to feel more present. The biggest thing I did was start to live for myself, not other people.

Your OP resonates with me too, at nearly 50.

I can actually remember the feeling of shock when I realised at about 40 that this life isn't a rehearsal. Reading that back it makes me sound crackers but I really felt shaken.

I keep thinking, next time, I'll do this, that or the other.

I had a moment the other night where I felt I have made a complete balls up of my life. I'm 38, 3 children youngest is 3. It just hit me that I don't and probably never have loved my husband. I've never found my zing. I married the first person who showed an interest. I had a stupid brief affair with someone. We never slept together but I had that feeling, how I should have felt for my husband. I'm now jobless, can't drive stuck in a crap town and feel like I've completely wasted my life

This thread resonates so much with me. I'm mid-30s and frequently wonder where the last 17 years have gone. I think I've struggled since leaving school, to pave a life out for myself. Up until age 18, everything was structured and everyone went through the same milestones at roughly the same time. I remember feeling completely cut adrift when I left school and suddenly it was up to me to make my way in the world. I often wake up and in those first few moments between sleep and being awake I think I'm still 18 and have completely blanked out going to uni, getting jobs, buying a house, getting married...

I was watching Glastonbury on TV a couple of weeks ago and couldn't get over the performances from 10+ years ago...it's incredibly depressing.

I also feel like I haven't achieved much, mostly because I don't have (or want) kids. I still feel like a teenager who hasn't grown up yet.

I tell you what this was me over the last year and turning 40 soon.

So I've started focussing on the now!

Cos it's not coming back - so I started treating myself to nice stuff finally!!

I've also started consistently telling my children how much I love them - just tonnes of love and when I speak I try to advise them

Also I wanted to start a business for years and next year I'm going to do it

Just can't keep holding on for something better - been meaning to move and now I'm like I need to enjoy the house I've got!!! So finally properly putting up pictures etc

Also I've started being less critical of people - especially my husband - he was my first love and we've been together 18 years and for that I'm grateful. I'm not perfect but neither is he but we make things work and I am careful to be kind and loving and remind him too sometimes when he's thinking negatively I'm helping him see the positive side.

The pandemic has certainly helped and life is no longer on hold it has to be for the now!

Crikey OP this is a bit too close to home. Definitely yes to the "rehearsal" feeling. I've also realized I'm probably never going to be properly good at anything and my memory leans far more towards bad thing than good. So when I look back I generally only remember feeling unhappy even though I'm a pretty happy person. So weird!

I'm 65 and recently due to applying for government pension, renewing passport etc I've had to write date of birth so many times but what brings me up sharp is seeing my actual age in type e.g. on a recent medical report - 65 and 8 months. I swear it's like a kick in the guts.

However the worst jolt is when you momentarily just for a millisecond have to think how old your are, and think oh, I'm 55, then no fuck I'm 65!

In my head I'm about 47.

However the worst jolt is when you momentarily just for a millisecond have to think how old your are, and think oh, I'm 55, then no fuck I'm 65!

I'm 55 and frequently really think I'm just over 40, the shock at realising you're actually 15 years old is just weird

I found an interesting theory on youtube (caveat, I realise that's where there are way more than 6 impossible things to believe before breakfast!) that on dying, you do actually relive your life from the beginning again, and that was what the maker of "Groundhog day" believed, and that may also explain what premonitions are, they are recollections of "last time".
That makes no sense regarding the awfulness of history though, why wouldn't the protagonists not start wars etc to begin with? Except perhaps they did, but we're not in that version.
Aaaaargh, my brain is melting.

I often feel like an outsider/observer, as if I am not fully in the "game". I used to think that a song that described my life was "driftwood - hollow and of no use … drifting for a long, long time", drifted into a job, into a relationship, job was comfortable for nearly 2 decades & then they let me go, I have to be more proactive and get one in something I want to do.
I am being kinder to myself now and prefer Corinne's "unwritten" as a theme tune to my life.

There is also the blackhole/Bermuda triangle phenomenon around the Millennium to consider!

I was just listening to something on Radio 4 where they were discussing Italia 90 (football), Nessum Dorma, Pavarotti, etc - my boys and I are football fans so I remember it well.

I was thinking, bloody hell where did 20 years go and feeling quite nostalgic for when my boys were children; of course it was 30 years ago!!

I remember my mum saying that I wouldn’t like birthdays when I was older. Then I felt sad as I was no longer single digits at 10th birthday. Then I remember looking at the shadows in my room each day when I was revising for exams and thinking time was going fast. Now I’m approaching 40 and it’s bloody scary. I’ll before I know it. I can’t get around thinking that when my kids are 20 I’ll be in my 50s and 60s whereas I still feel like 1997 wasn’t that long ago. The 60s have always seemed ages ago but in reality, I was born a lot closer to the 60s than now is to when I was born. It’s scary. Consciousness of time comes and goes.

There have been so many interesting responses to this thread, thank you. It seems that this feeling is more common than I realised.

I don't really know how to shake myself out of the feeling that I will get another chance at life. I think it makes me really careless with my time which I feel so guilty for. Sometimes I even do it with special days or events. Like my birthday this year (pre-lockdown) I just spent the day at home aside from a brief outing to the supermarket. I could have made plans with friends or family but I just didn't, I'll do it "next time". Sometimes when there are events like a gathering or party and I will just cancel going for seemingly the smallest of things like if I have a subtle headache as I'll do it "next time". I wonder if there is an element of self-sabotage there too.

@FlyRobinFly

I have felt the same OP.

I did read something a few years ago that I found very comforting. There is so much we don’t know about the universe and the way it operates, there are some things we simply cannot answer. Matter cannot be created or destroyed, so what happens to it? There’s a theory that once the universe dies, the matter rearranges itself to it’s ‘original’ position and the entire process starts all over again from the beginning. So you’ve lived this exact life infinite times before and you’ll live it infinite times again. Of course, it’s all a theory but I’m not a woo person so prefer to take comfort in something like this than getting hung up on religion etc. Because it feels like it COULD be possible, if that makes any sense.

I find that thought very comforting. There is so much about the universe that we just don't know and it is something I find so fascinating to read about (even if sometimes I can't fully wrap my head around it all lol).