San Antonio ♥️

We went to San Antonio this weekend. ..before that, I want to mention, I could really spend my life writing. But ‘life gets in the way’ 🙄 I don’t like that phrase ‘life gets in the way’ for a few reasons, one being that one makes time for stuff.

Anyways, why I say that I could spend my life writing is because, as I started writing this post, I felt the urge to open up and say EVERYTHING. Every bit of my experience, not just that, but the way back as to why. But I’ll share just a little bit.

Well, the first and last time I was in San Antonio I was five or six years old and only remember bits and some pieces of that visit. But all through my life I’ve had this feeling of ‘I belong in Texas’ and the city in my heart would always be San Antonio. 

I can’t express what I felt being there this weekend. Oddly, I felt at home. As if my ancestors lived here long ago. Walking through a downtown street felt like I walked that street before it was just an odd feeling. I know that wasn’t explained quite right, but yeah, hopefully you may understand what my soul is trying to say.

INTERRUPTION, I just finished having a conversation with ChatGPT. I will copy paste…

ME: What is this feeling called, let me explain. ..so I went to San Antonio as I was walking through the street it felt weird , as if (wait, let me say this first, I’ve never been to San Antonio before- although I did visit when I was 5 for a couple days) but while walking it felt (I’ll TRY to explain) I felt like I belonged there , I was comfortable but let’s go deeper, it felt like if my parents or ancestors would’ve made different choices in their life. I would’ve been born and raised there. As if San Antonio was/would’ve been my hometown ‘in another life’? I felt it like my hometown.

CHATGPT:

The feeling you’re describing is often called déjà vécu, which goes beyond typical déjà vu. While déjà vu is the sense that you’ve seen something before, déjà vécu involves the feeling that you’ve experienced an entire situation or place deeply, as though you truly belonged there in another life or alternate reality.

What you felt also aligns with a concept known as anemoia—nostalgia for a place or time you’ve never actually experienced. It’s a mix of familiarity, comfort, and a sense of “what could have been.” It’s almost as if you’re connected to an alternate version of your own story, one that might have unfolded in San Antonio if things had gone differently.

There’s also a term in psychology, cryptomnesia, where a faint, often forgotten memory—like a childhood visit—can resurface and create a sense of familiarity, even if you don’t consciously remember it. Your experience seems to sit at the intersection of all these ideas: the feeling of a past that’s both familiar and foreign, connected to a place that feels almost like home.

 

This right here "as if you’re connected to an alternate version of your own story, one that might have unfolded in San Antonio if things had gone differently." I felt that one. 

I would like to add that my dad and my aunts and uncles lived in San Antonio growing up. I asked my dad, and he said he lived in the center of San Antonio. He mentioned Commerce and also mentioned Guadalupe street. He still has a couple of cousins that live there, I’ve met them sometime decades ago. I know that they have families…but I don’t know them.

I would add San Antonio as a place I would live in the United States. I don’t say that lightly. I would strictly live only in certain places.. which I have ‘no idea’ what I’m doing in Houston 🤦🏻‍♀️🤷🏻‍♀️. The only other places I would live permanently would be Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Phoenix but now I’ve added San Antonio to the list. As if I knew that already tho.

What’s interesting is that my eight year-old son told my husband that he was getting used to San Antonio, that we were going to move there. That was very interesting to me since we’ve definitely never mentioned anything about moving there. He said he liked San Antonio.

At the same time that San Antonio feels as if its part of my past, it also feels like, time to ‘move on’.

We are spiritual beings, and if we listen closely, we just know certain things without fully knowing or understanding. I wouldn’t say that now I want to move to San Antonio. But I analyze these things. San Antonio felt like when I go to Phoenix, it feels like home. Except I know nothing about San Antonio, nothing personal.