Ok, so I'm a 22year old woman from New York City and every since I was a child I've always had this deep fascination with the past. I always felt this deep connection with late 80s and early 90s culture. The fashion, the music, movies, the way people talked, the way everything looked, and even old items from that time period. When I was a child whenever I heard a song from that era, I instantly got flashbacks of things that never happened! I felt a nostalgic feeling. My mom kept these old clothes in her closet from the 80s and I would sometimes dress up in them and I would pretend like I was actually in that time period. When I hit my teen years I suddenly became obsessed with stories of suicide, well all my life I've been very interested in stories of suicide (as terrible as it sounds) but when I became older I started to look up stories and even documentries on it, and I've always wanted to know about people who died around the late 80s and early 90s. When I was about 5 I recall having out of place memories that didn't add up. Now I'm having recurring dreams in the same town but different things happening. This one dream I had, I was in a supermarket and everyone had on vintage clothing it was so weird. I'm still obsessed with that era. I watch old commercials on YouTube and I feel this peacefulness and happiness whenever I search up old videos from the late 80s and early 90s. Sometimes I find myself talking in slang from that time as well. In my present life I suffer from depression but I'm not suicidal. I'm wondering if this because I was maybe depressed in my past life and committed suicide?
Hi Jayla! I found what you wrote very interesting. I think you could very well have lived back then.
Regarding the depression I think I have had a similar problem.
I would have for years after visiting a town in US on vacation flashbacks, dreams and during meditation as well experiences of being someone else ( a female ) in the 1950's who had once lived there. I could feel her depression. Her shame. Her insecurities. Like me she was sensitive but I am fortunate not to have depression in this life. However I know she did not kill herself. She was by then used to the symptoms of depression and knew how to handle it and her loved ones
( including her ex ) knew how read her and I realized that people were close by and that she was loved ( even if her depression-monster told her she was not worthy of love ).
I have during meditation experienced another potential past life in the 1920's and seen glimpses of her being depressed.
I have lately thought of the theory that the same thing happened to "me" in these two past lives (1920's and 1950's).
In the 1920's was very much in love and in a steady relationship with a man, we can call him W. He came from better social circumstances money- and career wise and his future was all decided for him. We came from different worlds. From what I can tell I believed we would be married one day when he was finished with his education and have a wonderful life.
I think for a woman in my shoes back then I was in conflict of what society, the church, the way I had been raised told me to do and what I wanted to do and was too much in love with my man to not do without realize I was stepping out on thin ice - that is sharing my bed with W before we were married, trying to avoid pregnancy but there it one day was. I was pregnant.
I truly blamed only one person for the pregnancy and that was me. He had just been "a man" and I was by society etc suppose to hold my ground and not get carried away with strong feelings of passion. I was "bad".
It was not the "right time", as they say, but in order to protect me and the baby W married me without a blink of an eye, never telling his "fine" family he did it when he did because I was expecting.
I feel as if he was cut off from his family, cut off from his promising career and life, like it really was 2 different worlds and we now existed in the black-and white world while he had lived all his life before in the colored one. That the doors were closing in his face even if he was too stubborn and strong to admit it to me. Again I took the blame for that.
Then to add to my quilt I miscarried and we were both very sad.
I really felt as what ever I touched in life became poisoned and died, that without intent I was messing other people's lives up. That I could not even protect my baby. I was so ashamed of myself. I would not even look up and look people in the eye.
Even if I don't want to go through that door of re-experiencing the background to why her husband and father thought she had committed suicide by drowning I think at this point that it is likely.
Then again I have experienced nightmare of trying to save a child from drowning but I don't know if this was a child of her imagination, that she was confused and only wanted to save it without realizing there really was no child there with her in the water.
Then after having about 100 flashbacks or so I have come to the conclusion that pretty much the same thing happened in the 1950's but with a different ending.
Being unmarried at the time. Thinking we would marry one day. Still being with W, but now we can call him J, having been reborn too. I think they could potentially be the very same soul because my feelings for him; the warmth and the light and closeness and being a bit childish together, giggling, were the same. He also had the same physical looks.
I became pregnant at the wrong time. He again offered without a blink of an eye for us to get married and not tell anyone of the pregnancy when we did, to just elope. Thing was if he had done that his promising career would get smashed into. He had also before blamed our youth for wanting to wait to get married but he would act in a lot of ways as if we already were married, his home was my home and so on.
Again I felt her emotions of blaming herself for the pregnancy, and now thinking she could somehow take care of this alone, feeling very protective of him and his career. She started to really change during this period and would in his words "run away". I felt her strong pain. Unintentionally I think the doors to her past life in the 1920's pain-wise were re-opened but I don't think she knew where these emotions came from. They had broken up in the chaos of her pregnancy and fights about how, when to marry. He did not like the sound of "we" but said over and over again that it was she that left him. In that life she miscarried as well and the baby was the only one she thought of protecting. She was "bad" but the baby was good and J was good. This was her mind frame. She would never do anything to hurt this baby, I could tell. So when she miscarried she was very sad that she did and felt like a failure but she didn't kill herself but tried to re-invent herself and move on. The mask was on. On and off in life I could feel her depression. I know very well of her mind ghosts, the phrases used that seem to belong to a bully that did nothing but push her down, that even if you say lies - if you say it plenty enough it becomes the truth.
I think in my own life I have strategically known of my sensitivity, but putting up walls, to actually be more selfish than I think I was back then. Early on I felt that no matter what I was going to "own my life". I do have a danger of going inwards when hurt and angry instead of putting words to the emotions and I have trained myself not to do that, but it is always my first instincts. It is something I by nature just sink right into and I am aware of it when it happens and then break the chain. For me this is not something that has come easy and I still have to remind myself.
Strange thing perhaps is that the same thing has happened to me in this life without intent of course. I became pregnant at the wrong time, but I looked people in the eye and said I was pregnant. I refused to feel any shame. I said the truth that the pregnancy was not planned but that I was very happy and excited to have it. I honestly did not care about anyone else's besides my partner's thoughts or feelings about this. Their looks of our reality or their judgment on our relationship. Life is not like a fairy tale. Who made up these rules anyhow? The father of the child is someone that I don't think is W or J, but he is the love of my life and we are married and been for a long time. We got serious from the day we met, like we had always been a couple, people would comment that we were so close and they thought we had been a couple for years when we were really a new, fresh couple. I am different in my attitude regarding weddings and marriage too than the 1920's and the 1950's girl. To be frank I honestly don't care if I am married or not on paper as long as I am married in my heart.
I have learned to avoid the emotions of depressions during meditation or to interrupt when they appear too strong. I know depression is a disease and should be treated as such, and it is not who we really are.
Please, take care
/Jaimie