The World I Was Born In No Longer Exists

There's this meme that's been floating around for years that's been quite haunting for me. It has a picture of a young blonde girl, who oddly enough looks a little bit like me (although I think she resembles my sister even more). The girl is at a park standing in the grass and, in the background you can clearly see the twin towers. The caption for the meme reads "The world you were born in no longer exists".

For me, there are so many layers to this.

To begin with, it's showcasing my childhood. Long gone are the days when I live a carefree life. Long gone are the days when the most important thing in my life was riding my bike around the block and having sleepovers at my friend's house. My childhood has long been over. This is the most obvious surface level feeling this meme gives me.

Regarding the same subject, on a deeper level it also signifies the end of my innocence, which has also been long gone. In fact, my innocence was taken from me. It was not given freely.

As I take a deeper breath, and my eyes start to fill with tears, I feel on a collective level that our innocence was taken from all of us. The twin towers in the photo are the reminder that revenge isn't sweet, that it's in fact bitter and the all the blood that was shed in this 20 years of war with the middle east will not bring back those who died from the twin towers crash on September 11th, 2001. The worst part was, our rage was a manufactured consent. We did not agree to all that. Our innocence was taken from us.

It's no coincidence that both the collective innocence and my personal innocence were taken away around the same time. It feels like some sort of haunting destiny.

The years go by and the world gets less and less recognizable from the one in my childhood. My hometown, once a place of safety and community has been plagued by opioids. Mass homelessness has made the streets and parks unsafe for kids. Mass theft has made it nerve wreaking to leave ones car out of their sight. My hometown is not the same place I grew up in.

The rise of social media have slowly replaced in person gatherings. The lockdowns of 2020 put the foot on the accelerator. Even after the lockdowns, more and more people are opting to converse with friends online instead of in person.

The political divide bullshit has torn groups apart. Family members are fighting against each other. Decades old friendships are breaking up. For what though? Most people don't even know what they actually believe in. Most people follow the talking points of a certain side and think that side is righteous and the other side is evil. If only they knew the truth.

I feel like a stranger to most of my friends and I feel like I can't relate to my family anymore. It gets so incredibly lonely at times. It feels like these were the relationships of the old world, a world that no longer exists.

I firmly believe that we are experiencing a timeline split and that split has been getting wider and wider. I can't exactly say when it started because, chances are, it was very subtle in the beginning. I used to think it was 2020, but as I look back the signs were there long before. I've heard people say 2016 because of the election but again I think it was before that too. 2012 seems to come up often due to the mysteries of the Mayan Calendar and that's when cern turned on the God particle. I feel that is a very possible answer. Yet, this haunting meme gives me clues to suggest that it all started after 9/11. The generations born after that are different. They had smart phones by the time they were in grade school. The start of the Opioid Crisis aligns almost around the same time that 9/11 happened. As I write this, my clock says it's currently 9:11. I believe in synchronicties. I used to think that it was all woo-woo but my life has been synchronicity after synchronicity. I can now longer ignore the signs.

Anyway, back to the timeline splitting....I believe that the old world no longer exists and that we are in a transition period. We have the power to decide where to go from here. Some will choose the higher path while others will try to cling to old, only to realize there's no going back. I feel like that's something I've been grappling with. There's a nostalgia for the old but I also know it's time to move on, as painful as it may be.

There's a Welch word called hiraeth. It means a homesickness for a place you can no longer return, a place that perhaps never really existed, yet you feel about deep yearning and nostalgia for it. That word alone describes everything I feel with this haunting meme. I know can't return to the past. In many ways I don't want to. In some ways I miss it. I know however, that there's something bigger for me in the future even if at this moment the future looks dystopian. I choose the higher timeline. I choose to heal. I choose to do the inner work. I choose to guide humanity, in my own unique way, towards the higher path. I wish those well who choose not to come. The world I was born in longer exists and that's okay. Perhaps, it never did.