Time Traveller Me

My name is Jeff. I am thirty-five years old, a husband, and a father of two. I have an eleven-year-old son and a two-year-old daughter. My family and I live a fairly ordinary life. We are happy together, although, like most families, we have our share of problems—especially financial ones. I work as an engineer for a large company. My job is stable, and I get along well with my coworkers. I have no enemies and no one at work I would consider a rival. My salary is decent for an engineer. It isn't enough to make me rich, but it is enough to support my family. Life wasn't perfect. But it was mine. Then, one morning, everything changed. I opened my eyes and immediately knew something was wrong. The room around me looked strangely familiar. I slowly sat up. I knew this room. It was my childhood bedroom. Beside me was my younger brother, sleeping peacefully. But something was different about him. He looked incredibly young. For several seconds, I simply stared at him. My mind couldn't process what I was seeing. “What is happening?” I whispered. I quickly got out of bed. My first thought was my children. My son. My daughter. I needed to find them. I rushed outside. But the moment I stepped out of the house, I froze. The neighborhood was completely different. The buildings that had once surrounded our home were gone. The area behind our house, which had eventually become crowded with houses, was now nothing but grass and open land. Even the village nearby had disappeared. Where there had once been houses and streets, there was now farmland. I stood there in silence. I knew this place. This was exactly how it looked when I was a child. “No…” I looked around in disbelief. “Is this a dream?” Everything felt real. The air. The ground beneath my feet. The sound of the wind. Even the familiar smell of my childhood home. I pinched my arm. It hurt. This wasn't a dream. I forced myself to calm down. Think, Jeff. Don't panic. There had to be an explanation. The first thing I needed to know was simple. What year was it? I hurried back inside and searched for a calendar. When I found one, I stared at the date. 2000. I froze. “2000…” I quickly calculated the difference. Twenty-six years. I had somehow traveled twenty-six years into the past. But how? Why? What could possibly have caused this? I was still trying to understand what was happening when I suddenly heard someone calling my name. “Jeff!” I turned toward the window. It was my cousin, Japet. “Come outside! Let's play!” Several of my other cousins were with him. I recognized their faces immediately. It had been many years since I had seen them like this. When you grow older, life becomes complicated. Responsibilities increase. Work consumes your time. Your family becomes your priority. And before you realize it, you lose contact with people you once saw almost every day. Seeing my cousins again brought back memories I hadn't thought about in years. But I couldn't simply run outside and play with them. Something inside me was still thirty-five years old. My mind was that of an adult. I had a wife. Two children. A career. Responsibilities. And now, somehow, I was trapped inside my younger body. I had too many questions. I went back to my room and sat on the bed. Can I go back? That question frightened me more than anything else. Would I ever return to my own time? Would I see my wife again? Would I see my children? Would I ever hold my daughter in my arms again? I closed my eyes. I had made many mistakes in my life. Some were small. Others had affected me deeply. But eventually, I always managed to correct my mistakes and find my way back to the right path. Maybe that was the purpose of hardship. Maybe life gave us difficult moments so we could learn from them and become better versions of ourselves. But now… I had been given something impossible. A second chance. If I really had traveled back in time, could I correct the mistakes I had made? Could I avoid the hardships that had once broken me? Could I make better decisions? Or would everything happen exactly as it had before? Most importantly… Would I ever see my family again? I kept thinking about it until exhaustion slowly took over. Without realizing it, I fell asleep. --- “Jep!” Someone shook my shoulder. “Jep, wake up! It's already noon!” I slowly opened my eyes. My mother was standing beside my bed. “You're going to be late for school! Get up!” I stared at her. She looked so young. My mother. I hadn't seen her this young in decades. I sat there silently, trying to convince myself that this was real. Am I really here? Is this actually the past? I looked around the room again. Everything was exactly as I remembered it. The furniture. The walls. The old atmosphere of our home. This wasn't a dream. I had truly returned to the year 2000. But that realization came with another painful truth. My family was now twenty-six years away from me. My wife didn't know me yet. My son hadn't grown up yet. My daughter hadn't even been born. For the first time, I understood how painful time travel could be. I was surrounded by people I loved… but the people I loved most were no longer here. “Jep!” My mother's voice pulled me back. “Get moving! You're already late for school!” I finally got out of bed. I prepared my things, got dressed, and fixed myself up. Before leaving, I looked at the calendar one more time. 2000. I was no longer a thirty-five-year-old engineer. I was a Grade 3 student at a private school. And somehow, I had been given another chance to live my life from the beginning. I picked up my school bag and left the house. --- When I arrived at school, I immediately went to my seat. I had barely sat down when three boys approached me. I recognized their faces. But after so many years, I couldn't remember their names. The moment they reached my desk, one of them opened my bag. Another checked my pockets. They were looking for the money I had brought for lunch. Then I remembered. These were the Grade 5 boys who used to bully me. Back then, I had been terrified of them. I never fought back. I simply accepted whatever they did because I was afraid. But I wasn't that frightened child anymore. I was a thirty-five-year-old man trapped in the body of a nine-year-old. Still, I didn't want to fight them. Getting into a physical fight wasn't the solution. There was a much simpler way to handle this. Ask an adult for help. I suddenly wondered: Why didn't I do that when I was a child? So when they took my lunch money, I immediately went to the principal's office and reported what had happened. The school acted quickly. At that time, incidents like this were taken seriously. The three boys were called into the office. The principal looked at them. “Did you take Jeff's lunch money?” The three boys immediately denied it. “No, sir.” The principal looked at me. “Do you have any evidence that they took your money?” I thought for a moment. “My money consisted of three twenty-peso bills.” The three boys exchanged nervous glances. One of them suddenly pulled out some folded bills. “This is the money he gave me,” he said. “He just wanted to get it back.” The principal frowned. “If you cannot prove that this money belongs to you, then we cannot establish that you stole it from him.” I smiled. “I can tell you the serial number of every bill.” The room became silent. I carefully recited the serial numbers. The principal checked the bills one by one. His expression changed. Every number was correct. The boys stared at me in shock. The principal looked at them. “Where did you get these?” None of them answered. I then added, “I also want my parents to know about this. If necessary, I want their parents called to the school as well.” That was enough. The three boys began to panic. Eventually, they were crying and begging for forgiveness. I didn't need to punish them myself. They simply needed to understand that I was no longer an easy target. After that day, they never bothered me again. Word spread throughout the school about what had happened. The bullying became much less frequent. But that wasn't the only problem I had faced when I was young. There was another reason many of my classmates had looked down on me. I had dyslexia. Reading had always been difficult for me. As a child, I struggled to read and write, and because people didn't understand dyslexia back then, many simply assumed I was stupid. They called me bobo. Sometimes even adults joined in. I still remembered one particular incident. I had gone to the school canteen to buy something. After I walked away, I overheard some parents talking about me. “That child is stupid,” one of them said. “He still doesn't know how to read or write.” Those words stayed with me. People were quick to judge someone else's child. But they rarely looked at their own. Years later, I heard that one of those parents had a child who ended up being arrested for using illegal drugs. Life was strange that way. Some people were so interested in other people's lives that they forgot to take care of their own. Back then, I had eventually overcome my difficulties through determination. I practiced reading whenever I could. I refused to accept that I was stupid. And eventually, I learned. But now that I had returned to the past, I wondered whether I could change that part of my life too. --- A week passed. I was still in the year 2000. Nothing had changed. I was still a child. Still attending Grade 3. Still living with my parents. But the people around me had started noticing something strange. I wasn't acting like a child anymore. My cousins would ask me to play outside, but I usually refused. I preferred to stay alone. I didn't care much about the games children normally enjoyed. My parents noticed it too. “You've changed,” my mother told me one evening. “You've become so serious.” She studied my face. “You don't smile much anymore. Is something wrong?” I forced a smile. “Nothing, Mom. I just don't feel well.” But that wasn't the truth. The truth was much harder to explain. I missed my family. I missed my wife. I missed my son. I missed my little daughter. Every night, I wondered the same thing. How long would I have to live like this? Would I ever return to my time? Or was this truly my second life? I didn't have the answer. --- Another day passed. The loneliness became harder to bear. I couldn't stop thinking about my wife and children. I missed their voices. I missed the little things I used to take for granted. I missed coming home from work and seeing my family. I missed being a father. That night, the weight of everything became too much. I went outside and sat alone. I needed somewhere I could release everything I had been keeping inside. I filled a bucket with water and lowered my face into it, desperate to silence the thoughts running through my mind. I want to go home. I want to see my family. The world around me seemed to disappear. Then, suddenly… Something changed. The air felt different. The surroundings became strangely quiet. I lifted my head. I looked around. My heart stopped. The old house was gone. The fields were gone. The childhood neighborhood was gone. Instead, I was standing inside my own home. My home. I looked toward the mirror. My reflection stared back at me. I was thirty-five again. For several seconds, I couldn't move. Then I ran. I rushed through the house, desperately searching for my family. “Where are they?” I opened the bedroom door. My son was there. Alive. Safe. I immediately pulled him into my arms. I hugged him as tightly as I could. He looked at me in confusion. “Dad?” I couldn't answer. I was too overwhelmed. I had missed him more than words could describe. Then I heard a familiar sound from the kitchen. My wife was there, preparing food. I walked toward her. She looked at me. “What's wrong?” I simply stared at her. My wife. My family. They were really here. I checked the date and the time. My heart began racing. It was the same day. The same hour. The exact moment before I had disappeared. It was as if I had never left at all. Twenty-six years had passed inside my mind… but in the real world, not even a moment seemed to have gone by. I stood there, trying to understand what had happened. I had traveled to the past. I had lived there for what felt like days. I had experienced my childhood again. And somehow… I had returned. But one question remained. Why? And even more importantly… Could I do it again?