I’m not talking about metaphysics and past lives, reincarnation, that sort of thing.
I was updating my resume the other night and that always gets me to thinking about the arc of my life, career and so forth.
Maybe it’s because I’m heading into my early 40’s now, but I’m feeling less and less connected to the things I used to do, the people I used to know, the places I used to live and so on back in my 20’s.
To me, it almost actually feels like a whole seperate lifetime back then. I say that because virtually nothing about my current life is like what it was back then. And I’m not just talking about living in a different place and working in a different job and having different friends - although all of that’s changed too.
What I’m getting at is that I such a totally different person now than I was 20 years ago, that the “old” part of my life seems like it belongs to a different person completely.
Maybe it does, I don’t know.
What about you? Have things changed for you significantly enough that you feel somehow disconnected or distant from your “old” life?
I refer to “a former life” to describe the first 7 years of my working life: I worked nights, had a different job, was pretty dependent on alcohol, smoked 1 to 2 packs a day…
I travelled all the time until the age of 10 when I moved into a house. I still travelled, on and off, until I was 16.
After a massive falling out with my father I stopped travelling altogether. Further conflicts with my dad (and others) led to the cutting of all ties with my culture - being classed as an outcast - when I was about 19.
That was my “old” life. I have a little contact with Roms from other nations, am a bit of a Roma rights activist and, occasionally, I’ll bump into others on the periphery of Romani culture and chat with them a little. But the travelling life is gone, with no hope of reconnecting to it.
Also, until I met Washte I was extremely antisocial and more or less incapable of loving anybody.
I’m kind of resuming my “old” life - that being my life when I was sober the first time around (about three years). I’m having the same nice feelings again, feeling optimistic again, feeling a sense of peace inside. I don’t feel like that all of the time. Sometimes I get these moments of panic where I feel displaced and wonder how I got here again, “here” being a moderately happy, sober life. I wonder where all the beer bottles went, why I don’t feel like throwing up all the time, why I’m not shaking, why I feel OK when I wake up in the morning. When I have those moments, it’s almost like I want that back, because it was familiar, it was the way I lived the past three years.
Then I remember the sheer hell it was, and am glad to be where I am now. It’s not my “old sober” life after all - it’s new all over again (if you can follow what I mean), it’s different, and I’m enjoying it immensely.
absolutely. hell, i’m only 17 and i feel like that all the time. so far there are about three sections i split my life into. probably sounds stupid to all you older dopers, but it’s true.
before high school i was an outcast. i had looow self esteem, problems with asserting myself, and allowed people to treat me like shit. thus my life was not all that wonderful.
the time came for high school and i decided to ‘get out’. instead of going on to another homogenous, oppresive, hierarchical school with the same people and my second life began. some people (well, most i think) HATED high school. for me, it was the best thing that ever happened to me. and it changed me forever. i wouldn’t recognize myself.
my third life is the one im in right now. i’ve always had problems with telling people about my problems. i was always the one people thought had no worries in life,you know? the one who helps everyone else with their problems and never has any of her own. well, i did have problems, and they were not little ones. my family was terribly dysfunctional and i spent a lot of time hiding away, turning up the stereo or the tv to drown out the shouting. never told a soul. kept it all in. and it distanced me from other people. kept me alone, in my mind, you know? so i went on a retreat and while im not religious at all it changed my life. forced me to look at myself and see what i liked and didn’t like, and made me talk to the people there about my life, when i’d never really done that. and again, i’m a different person. life number 3.
so far, it seems to be getting better rather than worse with every life. and as i’m graduating in may and heading off to college, i’m going to start a new life soon…we’ll see.
About 6 years ago I began taking care of my grandmother full time. She’s a few weeks shy of 89 now. It basically means that now I spend about 22 hours a day in my house making me practically a shut-in. It all makes me feel like I have more in common with the elderly then I do with people my own age (28), or even people my parents age (late 40s).
Before then my life was incredibly different. Had a job, had my own place, lived thousands of miles away. Went out with friends. Sigh.
Another silly 17 year old, well because I thought i could somewhat relate although it’s not exactly the same type of thing. Since my father is a diplomat, I move to a different country every 3 years, and since the setting, my age, my friend and sometimes my lifestyles was changed, it often feels like a different life. And whenever I an email from somewhere before, it’s like a reminder of the world i left behind.
twelve years ago I was living in a spider-infested house with a pot-smoker and an anarchist. I smoked a pack of Marlboros a day and worked night shift. I was a skinny, long-haired, pale-faced, red-eyed, loser.
That was my old life. My then-girlfreind, now wife got me going back to church. I quit smoking. Now I’m a married father. And I’m not skinny.
I remember my old life, back when I actually remembered anything that could be important. My wife and I are in our latter 40s. We have been married for 20 years, together for 25. Five years ago we got most of our projects accomplished. Then we had a child. Now we have two kids, ages 5 and 3. This is our new life. I remember my old life.
I am turning thirty in a couple of months and it’s been at the forefront of my mind just how different my life is now in comparison to how it used to be. I suffered from clinical depression from the ages 12-25 and spent the majority of my teenage years in and out of hospital and on heavy medication. I was homeless from the age of 16 for about a year during which I would have sex with people for drugs or somewhere to sleep. From about 17 I was a dancer for a rave crew which travelled around setting up illegal house parties. I went to college at 19 and got involved in a stupidly dysfunctional and abusive relationship where I ended up being a sex slave who got whored out for parties. After I got my degree, my clinical depression flared up and I had to step right back, so I became a bartender for years as it didn’t stress me too much and I could dump the job if I wanted.
I have been a squatter, I have eaten out of dumpsters, I have taken drugs that people put in front of me without even asking what they were, and have had a lot of extremely unsafe sex. I was a punk with a mohican and multiple piercings and at one point in my life was averaging about two sexual partners a day.
Now? I own my own home which is worth a good amount, am extremely respectable, barely even drink let alone partake of other intoxicants. I work with the homeless, have been offered the management of two different projects this week, and have been spotlighted as someone capable of running the homelessness strategy commission for the city council in perhaps five years time. I probably sleep with someone once a month, if I can be bothered to go out at all. I am utterly boring and haven’t had a depressive episode in over a year. It’s very nice.
Getting close to my 40’s, I also feel the same as if, so far, I have lived two different lives. One where I knew all the cool places to go, what to do and knew all the right people. I was a party animal until I was about 25.
Now when we we have dinner a bunch of friends, and talk about the past, it feels very disconnected, like I’m relating stories that I heard somewhere, when in fact it’s my life.
It is a very very strange feeling getting older (or should I say more mature!!).
I’m 29 and my mom died 5 years ago from cancer. I feel like I have two “old lives”–the one up to when my mom got sick, then the 9 months or so she was dying. Now my current life feels like a million years and a million miles different from my “old” lives…I am a completely different person since my mom died.
As you’ve already seen in this thread, TVGuy, many of us have “old” lives.
I didn’t even think about college until I was 22, because I thought I’d make a career as a drummer. Well, those several years involved much that has zip effect on my life now.
My several years spent as a cabdriver similarly involve lots of people, places and stuff that are no longer part of my life.
But I do have long-lasting friends from those epochs who remain.
Nevertheless, the life arrangements previously described are history that has little to do with current events.
What’s interesting to me in reading the responses in this thread is how the difference between your “old” life and your “now” life frequently has nothing at all to do with a particular amount of time passing.
As it is with me. Honestly, I sometimes feel like my “current” life started with a few closely spaced events - my departure from an old job and old living arrangement, my moving accross the country, breaking up with my boyfriend, taking on whole new batches of responsibility.
It’s sometimes hard to believe that a great deal of my “old” life really still existed as little as nine years ago.
I graduated from college at 22 (like many) and have found that I have tended (without really planning) to remake my life every 10 years or so… I change careers, cities, major relationships.
It has been a hoot, so far, each cycle has been invigorating, challenging and successful.
The latest change has me marrying a woman I last saw at age 21 (3 cycles ago).
As a kid I was with it and quite happy, up until fourth and fifth grade when people started (mostly pretending) to notice the opposite sex. They did not notice me. At the end of elementary school the first part ended.
Middle school was hell on earth. Should I have kids, I’m going to homeschool them for at least those three years. I’m serious. The first two years of high school were reasonably better, and then before the third year I moved to another state. Things were looking waaaaay up at that point.
Then my dad died in the May of my junior year. Not fun. End of second part.
Several years of doing not much and I finally start back to school at 21. For five years I’m plugging away at it, doing pretty well, and mostly having fun, aside from math. Things were quiet, aside from juggling bills and whatnot.
December of 2001 I meet the man I was going to marry. Then this last December I finally get to meet his parents. All seems well until we get home and we are told that they officially disapprove and will not attend. My ex-fiance, instead of doing what I’d have done and saying, “I’m sorry you feel that way, but we’re getting married anyway,” ends the engagement because he “doesn’t want to change my relationship with my family.”
End of third. Beginning of fourth. That’s where I am now. I just hope the fourth one looks up, because last year was WONDERFUL and I’d hate to never experience that again.
