Sometimes I like going back to neighborhoods I used to live in and just walking around. I’ll pass by my old street or places I used to go to and remember the people I knew there and different moments from that time in my life.

Some memories are good, some not so much, but I still enjoy going back every once in a while. It’s a weird feeling seeing a place that used to be part of your everyday life but isn’t anymore.

Does anyone else do this?

No smartphones, no social media, no endless notifications. Just whispering secrets, playing with marbles, fighting over the Game Boy, and staying outside until it was time to go home.

Which one of these brings back the strongest childhood memory for you?

I’ve had a reoccurring memory over the last few months. i was young and my dad was mad and holding me to take me back to my bedroom because I had wondered into theirs. The weird thing is I distinctly remember my nightgown being pulled up above my hips and I had no underwear on. I am 66 years old and this memory makes me very uncomfortable suddenly.

I used to have this small stuffed bear named Dori. my great-great grandmother gave her to me when i was four. Every night before bed I would check if she was still with me, and she always was.

A few months ago, I lost her at a hotel. When we called them, they couldn’t find her. I couldn’t get over it for weeks.

Call me sensitive or childish, but she just made my childhood complete. Rest in peace Dori.

This boy is almost 30 years old. Its survived countless moves by now and hes still here.

my story
i was born on the 17th of july 1998 in southampton hospital. i was premature so was incubated for a while i was one of 9 children but sadly my mother lost the others. i lived in southampton till roughly around the age of 3/4 i roughly have memories of being on a pebble beach with my dad, and then we moved to west wales where my parents were originally from so we moved to wales i went to my nans a lot in where i used to play on the play station i remeber all the games we used to play with my older cousin i looked up to him a lot. i used to love going to nans especially around halloween bon fire night during carnivals and fun fairs, also christmas as i used to steal the little mini chocolate santas off the tree, then i went to nursery down the road from my nans and then moved to primary school i used to have a friend called Dylan i would always buy biscuits on break from the mini shed they had in the school, i remeber going to the end of the field in the school playground and standing at the fence looking at the refinery thinking about my dad as he used to work there, i also have memories of dressing up a lot and playing on my playstation playing shadowman with dad, then we moved to a town i’ll name J Town. i then spent a lot of time in children’s department at the back of the hospital where i was tested as i had to see a few child specialist doctors and they had me do certain things then later diagnosed with autism and D.A.M.P and i went to primary school in J town. i made some friends i used to always wear a spider man too under my clothes i was obsessed with dressing up i always felt like i was someone else, i used to take a lot of days of school my behaviour become bad i became fussy things had to be done a certain way i watched my first ever horror movie at that young age and was scared but cind of curious, about them, it gave me a weird obsession with knives and i started drawing stuff at a young age that wasnt pleasant and then my parents got called into my schooool because of my drawings etc, it all cooled down then mum and dad split up and i had a step dad, things felt weird at first but then got used to it i also developed a twitch that led to me being diagnosed with tourette’s, i then left primary and went into secondary school, i loved music and discovered the band slipknot i had a slipknot bag and went thru a typical teenage stage i i got bullied and caused problems in school and never really fitted in then shortly after i left secondary school at a young age and stayed out of school for a while i started putting on a lot of weight my health declined my mum and step dad split up then after a while i started having private education at home then i was staying at my dads place on the weekends and would go back to my mothers during the week i got into trouble a lot and my dad took time off work to look after me because my mother went into a psychiatric hospital for a long time and during that time i started going to a private college for teens who struggled in school and around that time i turned 16 so i got a moped and finally felt free like a new person, then when i turned 17 i got my first 125cc motorbike and fell in love with it, ive always loved bikes any kind and mum came out of hospital so i started living with mum again whilst going back and forth to dads on the weekend, i got my first car then but didnt have. a license i sold it shortly afterward as i lost all interest in it and went back to motorbikes then later got a bigger motorbike and got caught riding it without a license or insurance and got charged with dangerous driving, i got banned for a long time and just about avoided prison i got into masks like horror masks as i’ve always loved horrors and masks, i met a girl and tried to change myself for the better but ended up hanging around with the wrong crowd and ended up getting arrested 2 years later and got charged and sent to prison for violent disorder i did 6 months in a prison near london and that hit me hard! i struggled inside of prison and when i come out i split up with my gf shortly after, i met another girl who i thought was the one and was together for a year but i just. got used and rinsed of money and got dumped, then i went to ukraine for a while to volunteer during the war and i came home and met another girl who i moved away to live with in england. up at this point i didn’t have a job and no car or bike license, i lived up there for a while then she fell pregnant i then moved back down to pembrokeshire, and we had our own place down here in milford. i started making masks from home, i then got the chance to be in a movie in california it was an amazing experience! was a dream come true then when i came home a few months down the line my son was born in carmarthen hospital and that changed my world! we lived in that place in a small town for a while before we ended up moving to little village on the beach front , it was beautiful me and my partner at that time had a lot of ups and downs i went to scotland to try and achieve my dream job of being a commercial diver i had some training and came back things just went down hill, i became lazy and stressed we would argue all the time and my mask making wasn’t getting anywhere and we eventually moved then to J town where i grew up. where my son had a medical injury to this day it still gives me flashbacks and. and thoughts and suffer with the memory of that incident to this day, luckily he’s okay and now 3 and an amazing funny and intelligent boy ! after that i just become more depressed and easily triggered and angry we then ended up splitting and now i live back on the other side of J town with my parents at the age of 28.my son stays the day and night with me twice a week i also resent just passed my car theory for the first time on my first attempt and officially have a driving test booked in two months after putting it off for 12 years of worrying im glad i did it and starting to finally feel more alive,

thanks for reading
mr m.

Remember when the world felt so big that a trip to the local playground felt like stepping into an endless kingdom? You’d run around, hide behind trees, and leap off the equipment, feeling like an action hero and convinced the park stretched on forever.

One of the most surprising parts of growing up is revisiting those same places years later. That giant hill you used to slide down may turn out to be just a little patch of grass beside a parking lot. The huge swimming pool can seem more like a fancy bathtub, and the school hallway that once felt like a maze is really just one short, straight stretch. Your mind still holds onto the grand, cinematic version you remember from when you were three feet tall, so seeing the place as it is now can feel like a little glitch in the matrix.

What’s one place from your childhood that felt much smaller when you returned to it as an adult?

I remember when I was around 5 or 6 years old, I hit my head at a table and it was like I was suddenly aware of everything around me, but I don't remember anything from before then.
I remember seeing my grandmother and aunt for the first time but strange thing is, I already knew who they were.

I don't know, I just wanted to talk about it cause like, what happened in my first 4 years of memories? Like where the heck did they go.

when i was 6 i was hella scared from the sound of the toilet flushing so i would just leave the logs in there for the next person to flush. so was it there, my grandma use to make silly storys to keep me from doing bad things and she made one other one: if you leave the poo unflushed for long enough it will come to life and start hunting you. but i was uncertain about the wrong thing, i was stupid as a kid and i was skeptical of weither poos would be hostile or friendly when they come to life. and i wanted to make friends with a few so i could employ them along side my make believe army of little soldiers. so i pooped in a plastic bag every time for some weeks and tied the plastic bags door tight and i put them in the built in wall closet deep behind the stuff. after a while i completely forgot about my poopenstein army i was making and a few months have passed. one night in the summer we heard a really loud exploding sound from that room, my dad rushed in there to find a really bad stench and some inflated balloons with rotting turd inside them. we have power washed every inch of that room, evaporated so many different herbs and burned so many incents but every time someone entered that room the worst poo stench in the world would hit their nostrils. we moved out 3 months later because of this.

At the time, my grandma was having health issues while my younger brother would be sick very often. Thus my parents would scold me whenever I fell ill because they already have a lot of responsibilities. I never understood why they scolded me as if I chose to be sick in the first place. So I hid how sick I was unless I knew that I needed help. I remember literally laying in a tub while showering and placing a cool cloth on my forehead. I always felt better after doing that.