I was thinking about this recently, and I realised that whenever some of my favourite music would come up on a playlist – I would pretty much always skip it even though I hold it very dearly. I caught myself doing this again last night and so I forced myself to listen to some of my old favourites that I would binge regularly when I was growing up.
I think I had repeatedly been telling myself, "eh, you've heard this song a million times, let's find something new to listen to", then that became an ongoing habit to the extent that I haven't heard some songs in over a decade. I think I had been unconsciously avoiding some music because it has such a deep effect on me and sort of makes me feel out of time and place (if that makes sense?), like I'm a kid again but in a very jaunting way.
This happens with movies too, I used to watch the same movies endlessly – this was before streaming mind you, so its not like we had the liberty of choice. But a clip from one of those movies popped up on my feed and it was very emotionally impactful, to the point where I was questioning why I haven't watched it for nearly 20 years?
I think the answer is probably that a lot of these things were coping mechanisms when I was younger, and revisiting them is quite a heavy weight that not everyone has the same experience of, at least people that I speak with regularly. So I'm wondering if anyone can relate?