To miss the past so much it almost hurts

[Duggeeismysaviour]

First off, I'm very very lucky to live the life I do. I'm so grateful for it, and I have many moments in the day with my toddler and baby that are just wonderful.

But I'm so sad lately. I'm doing very little apart from childcare. Not seeing friends (as we left UK in March, hoping to return soon), not going anywhere socially, not working.

I have the clearest memories of years gone by. I have an extremely good memory that means during quiet times I am hit with one memory after another of such specific things. From how I felt during a moment, to tastes, sounds, something somebody said. My mind cycles through all things I used to do, with people I used to know in various stages of my life. People that have now scattered and will never come together again. Things that were so so fun,
totally carefree, and that will never ever happen again. Dinners, nights in with husband before babies, nights out with friends, travelling the globe with a backpack. I have to stop myself from thinking, block it out, because it's painful. I feel like so many versions of me have died and now I'm just a shell, existing for my beautiful incredible children.

I know its melodramatic and completely self indulgent during a time when people have lost so much more. Bi know I'm lucky to have had those times. But that doesn't stop my sadness. Perhaps my bleak outlook is long term lack of physical friendship, along with current sleep deprivation, but I worry about the future, if I'm always looking back at the past. Do i need to just get a grip?

Well, I feel better for having said this here, as I can't explain it to anyone else! Has anyone else ever felt this strongly about their past? Is it a common stage in life (I'm 36) that I will get over, or will I always be sad that I'm not 24 anymore?!!!

I think it can be common at times in your life when you don't have much to look forward to, thanks to covid many of us are experiencing this currently! I find I almost mourn the loss of my babies as they grow, but then I also find absolute joy in their new skills. Mine are at school now and it's just amazing what they have learned. I think the key is to remember the good but also balance it with looking forward if that makes sense. And with little ones sometimes it's just about doing one thing per day, I found that enough that look forward to without being unachievable, if that makes sense?

I always do this too OP but I've realised I do this for every stage of my life and it's just nostalgia. In another few years I'd probably find something to be nostalgic about from this period (strange as it seems). It's because I remember only good things and not things I felt crap about at the time (which is a good thing in some ways I suppose). I feel really bad for people who are like 18-21 now cos they won't get that time back and they've missed out on all the normal fun things.

I felt very much like that when I had both my children. It was partly due to the massive adjustments, but also post natal depression. I couldn't look forwards to anything.

Do try to feel grateful for what you have. If you are not living with the fear of no income or home just count your blessings. Waking up to the thought of having nothing that you have worked for all your life isn't a great feeling, trust me.

'' The past is another country. They do things differently there.''

Quote error - ''The past is a foreign country ...''

Same age and feel the same OP!

I often think if I could choose a time in the past to go and live in permanently I would. Which even I with rational thought think is a bit nuts.

It's normal! In fact John Lennon wrote a song about it, 'In My Life'.

I am old enough to have known the song when it was new and I was too young to understand it.

It stayed with me until I had a young family of my own and understood its message all too well: 'You had your fun, now knuckle down and see what happens next!'

Life goes on and we have to let things go.
If we are lucky other, better things come along in their place. Lennon was so wise.

In what seems like no time at all, your own children will be having those experiences that you enjoyed so much. Trust me!

I have been through periods like this since having children/being mid thirties. The welsh have a word which I think describes it well:
sites.psu.edu/kielarpassionblog2/2016/04/02/hiraeth/

I think lack of friendship and lack of sleep will definitely be contributing to you harking back. We all hark back though.

When you DCs are older you'll be looking back all misty eyed to when they were very young. .. ie right now!

I think it’s really quite normal.

2020 has been really awful anyway for making people feel the same way.

I feel like this all the time, and I realise it's such a waste of energy if it makes you feel bad, as it does for me (I suppose a good use of energy if you enjoy revisiting those memories). I think it's partly age. The older I get, the more I realise how life is filled with loss - of time, people, chances, experiences. That doesn't mean that there isn't lots to be grateful for, or to look forward to. I also think the past is "safe" because it's encapsulated - there is no uncertainty because you can look back and see how it panned out. Don't know if that makes sense. What I do know is that I've been feeling like this for about 10 years, since early 30s, but now I desperately miss the last couple of years of my DS babyhood - though I know that at the time, I was desperately missing the years previously. I've been trying to focus on the present moment. Try anything (meditation etc) to help ground you here and now.

though obviously

I think what you are feeling is understandable to a large degree.

When I had my babies, particularly the first one, I found myself almost grieving the loss of my past life and feeling overwhelmed by the new responsibility now on my shoulders for our new DD.

I missed our relatively carefree lifestyle of before and our ability to do things much more spontaneously. Now that we had a baby to consider just getting out of the door to go for a walk had become like a military operation.

It did pass. I got used to our new routines etc. as did DH and DD. It is a huge adjustment and upheaval though and at first I didn't do it very well at all. I really struggled and my Mum had to come down for a further couple of weeks just to be with me.

Could this be PND? Is there any chance you could see a doctor in case?

My mother used to be like this and it made her incredibly depressed and sad most of the time. Always looking back to what once was.. I consciously focus in the now and the future. It's not healthy to live your life in the past. Leave it behind.

Maybe you have a case of saudade - a Portuguese word, we don't have a word for it, but I think it's wonderful. The wiki definition is 'a deep emotional state of nostalgic or profound melancholic longing for an absent something or someone that one cares for and/or loves. Moreover, it often carries a repressed knowledge that the object of longing might never be had again. It is the recollection of feelings, experiences, places, or events that once brought excitement, pleasure, and well-being, which now trigger the senses and make one experience the pain of separation from those joyous sensations. However it acknowledges that to long for the past would detract from the excitement you feel towards the future. Saudade describes both happy and sad at the same time, which is most closely translated to the English saying ‘bitter sweet’.

Maybe doing some reading about it will help. Sometimes allowing ourselves to understand a feeling and dissolve into a bit can make it more manageable.

I think it's just nostalgia, coupled with 2020! In a normal year, you'd be doing much more socially. You might have made new friends, be going to new places etc. It's a difficult time to have young children.

As your memory is so good, I'd be focusing on deliberately making some nice memories now, however small. A puddle walk in the rain with your kids; a coffee in the garden in the autumn sunshine when they're having a nap. You know you'll be able to revisit these memories later (how lovely!), so make the most of your ability?

sorry to hear this op i had much the same at your age, then for me sh*t got real as they say: more babies, a horrid bereavement, faced financial ruin....sorry not making u feel better probably but if you can't face up to real life right now, fine, but it's a shame if you're not living it don't you think? its great to revisit memories but not to dwell in them. i got a part-time job, created a club, found a friend, did mediation and yoga. it all helped loads. I feel more useful and able to help people and participate in real life now. Good luck.

The Welsh would call it hiraeth, OP. Sometimes translated as homesickness, but it's more than that. I experience it as a deep longing for the past and the self I have lost over time. Everyone goes through it to some extent as we live through different phases of our lives, but sometimes that kind of nostalgia can be misleading and blind us to the here and now.

There are so many good things still to come, you are just in a dip, through young children and current circumstances, but there’s a whole lifetime of happy times with your children as they grow, friends old a new.

Life is up and down, just now is a down for lots of us, but it will pass, and in the meantime you have happy memories, if you can experience them and remind yourself that they are not the only happy times you will have.

In a few years though you will end up idealising the time your children were young so try and live in the moment and enjoy now.

I have this OP but my painful memories are of a time when my children were young and happy family holidays with my parents and children. Going to nativitys at the school all the little things that you have ahead of you. I have pre children memories but since my children have become adults and moved on I miss them being small. So you are making more memories that you will later miss. In this light I have to remember that although we are going through difficult times, I am going to make more happy times and memories, one day I may be a grandma, my children are still all local to me and my daughter still lives here with her bf so I am cherishing as much as I can.

"Saudade". Wonderful, Tenth. That's the very thing.

I feel this OP. Most strongly when I smell the air on a warm summer night and it is literally to me the scent of the anticipation of the night of fun and freedom and love and laughter I was about to go out and experience when I was young and carefree. It's hard to leave it behind. It will be better when the graft of the early baby years is over though. Fun can be found again, even if not youth!

At least you lived life to the full when you were younger and you bookmarked all the pleasure you had doing so

I thought you were going to say your children were grown up and that was making you sad. I looked at some photos of my children from a few years back and it was almost painful so see them so little, knowing i won't ever see my chubby toddlers again.

Beautifully written. I too have a very good memory and I’m often overtaken by thoughts and visions from my past. Anything can trigger it ; a smell or a song on the radio, an old TV programme or maybe something I find in a charity shop - even a phone call from my father. I’m lucky in that I still live in the immediate area to where I was born and grew up so everything is familiar and yet I vividly remember it as it was, different coloured front doors, shops with different names and pubs that are now houses. Sometimes in an idle moment I wonder what date I would set my Tardis to and I keep coming back to 3rd May 1936. It’s quite haunting sometimes but my next door neighbour , who is 90, reckons I had a previous life and we frequently sit in the garden and talk about things that I really should know nothing about. My husband just thinks it something I’ve read or seen and its stuck in my mind, maybe he is right. We did a VE day thing recently and with the help of my neighbour I made a 1940’s floral dress complete with the right hair, stockings, period underwear and open toes shoes. I felt completely at home. It’s strange, as I sit here and feed my 3 months old ( I’m 42 – yes I know , should have known better ) I wonder what the future holds for her, and yet I can hear Pennies from Heaven by Bing Crosby. Perhaps I need to get out more.