Does anyone else get this type of thing?

[BellelovesD]

Sometimes if I'm driving through the town I grew up in I think I'll spot a group of teenagers and I have a split second where I think it must be my childhood friends, before I remember that I'm a 40 year old woman and the friends have long since grown up too.

Same if I drive past my old schools, I expect to see one of my friends walk by on their way to school. Only for a moment.

Very occasionally I wake up and forget where I live and I think I'm in my childhood bedroom or in my old house then I realise.

It's like Deja vu but not the same.

I get you.

I still live in my hometown. So desperately want to leave because I see school bullies on every corner

But, as dd has a place in a sen school, we're going nowhere for now 🥺

Absolutely, OP. A few weeks back, I woke up and could hear seagulls. We don't get them that often as we're not particularly coastal (close-ish but not like when I was growing up). I immediately opened my eyes and sat up in bed, fully expecting to be 16 and at home in my childhood bedroom. The anticipation for tea and toast, and to be up before my dad called me, was massive and so exhilarating!

Then I realised I'm 35 and I'm the one who needs to make the tea and toast for my own DC!

Not quite that but I was back home over Christmas and saw an old friend's mother in a cafe. I didn't know her well back then and I haven't seen the friend for nearly 25 years so didn't really acknowledge her.

About a day later it dawned on me, that would have been my old friend not her mother. Brutal.

I’ve recently started revisiting the village where my children were at school.

I saw a child, thought it was one of my children’s friends, then remembered all their friends would now be in their mid to late twenties, like my children are.

Haven’t been to the town where I grew up in years, so I can’t answer on that, but memory is indeed, a funny thing.

This sounds like a lovely moment/memory! Did you feel happy or sad when you realized?

Happens every time I am in town at school kicking out time. Fully expect to see my classmates among the crowds. Only I left school 30 yrs ago 🙁

I saw a girl today, maybe 20, beautiful, elfin features. Really striking. I clocked her and smiled and said to my partner "she looks like my mums friends daughter Jen" before I realised Jen will be nearing 60 now

It was a mixture of both! At first I was a bit "Oh..." as my dad passed in 2018, but it was very quickly replaced with a huge sense of joy that my brain could remember detail so vividly, and in those brief little moments I had been 16 again! It felt like I'd actually been able to relive the past and I was so happy!

Made the DC toast in Dad's way that morning; a bit too dark, and the butter clumpy and cold in parts, but melted in others. They loved it and asked why we didn't have it like that all the time! ❤️

I don’t get this in awake life but I am almost always around 16 in my dreams, always living in my childhood home, my siblings are also teens and both parents are alive. Occasionally I wake up and forget I’m an adult now and that life is gone.

DH does this all the time, he totally forgets how old he is.
For example our DC’s are all late 20’s early 30’s. He is 65.

Eg. DC’s are chatting amongst themselves about a friend’s new boyfriend and he will ask, “ What school did he go to? I might know him”.

In a similar way when I see old people in their seventies or older I assume they are the same generation of old people I knew as a child in the 80s, who fought in WW2 or even WW1, and then I realise that they are long dead and the people I’m looking at were small children when the war ended.

I do the childhood bedroom thing. Sometimes if I am very tired I think I just want to be in bed - and the picture in my head is my bedroom from when I am around 11.

Or even born well after the war, my parents are in their 70s and were both born in the 50s, it's strange to think all the old people we used to see probably aren't around anymore