Cover image via The BBC
On a spring night back in 2008, Naomi Jacobs went to bed as a 32-year-old English mother of an 11-year-old boy and a student at Manchester Metropolitan University. The next morning, she says, it was as if the last decade and a half of her life had never happened.
Image via Paul Stuart
In a fascinating interview with the BBC today, the British national says she woke up believing she was 15, and that the year was 1992.
She had no recollection of giving birth to her 11-year-old son, and when she looked in the mirror she was convinced she was dreaming! The 2008 technology throughout her house, including her smartphone and TV, looked to her like something out of a sci-fi movie. "Everything was so alien to me. I was convinced I was going to fall asleep … and wake back up in 1992," Naomi told the BBC.
And yet she hadn't forgotten everything
What she's describing fits the description of dissociative amnesia
Image via BBC
But, silver linings! Naomi says that the good thing about it was that the experience gave her a very interesting perspective on her grown-up life. She felt "quite fortunate, in a sense" that she'd gotten to see both her life and the world through the eyes of a teenager.
"At the age of 15, you imagine what you're going to be at the age of 32, and to wake up 17 years later and see that your life and the world hasn't quite turned out the way you expected to…. But seeing it again through my 15-year-old eyes gave me a new and fresh perspective to make the changes to ensure that it wouldn't happen again, and to improve my quality of life," she told the BBC.
