A feeling like being stuck in the backrooms

I've been on this thought train recently about my time as a kid in daycare around 4-5 years old. I remember dreading going, not because it was objectively terrible, but because I was always lonely and didn't know what to do with myself.

They would take us outside about 3 times a day to play along with free time indoors, and I would try to play with the other kids, but would frequently get left out of games or they wouldn’t really tell me what they were doing/pretending so that I could join them. I’d learned that it was impolite to just barge in and obnoxious to keep asking questions, so I’d say, “Can I play?” And the kids would be like, “Yeah, you can be [insert role I don’t really know how to play as]”

And then I’d spend the rest of what felt like forever trying to keep up and eventually give up and wander the playground alone, trying to look busy so that the adults wouldn’t think there was something wrong with me. I never really sought them out as I didn’t with most adults…I just never felt like I could go to them with how I felt. Most of the time, I didn’t even feel like playing. I just wanted to go home. I wouldn’t cry or anything, even when I wanted to. It just felt like being stuck in this eternity of strangers making me do things I didn’t feel like doing and eat snacks I didn’t like.

Inside, I’d glance at the clock (despite only being able to read the hour on the dot) and try to reassure myself that my mom would pick me up eventually and that it was silly to think I’d have to stay the night. Naptime was also really boring. The other kids would be knocked out and I’d just stare at the ceiling panel dots while Enya played softly in the background. I tracked the routine, telling myself I just had to get through free time and music time and then Mom would be there. It was as if I was an adult trapped in a kid’s body but with a kid’s anxiety.

Eventually, one of my parents would pick me up and I’d go home relieved briefly until the next time (I think it was Tuesdays and Thursdays and maybe another day). At first, I told my mom I didn’t want to go, but she made it clear that she didn’t want me to complain…so I just sucked it up and pretended it was all fine because it was supposed to be and everyone else there seemed fine…so why wasn’t I? I didn’t even have this problem at my actual school, just daycare and sometimes other non-school extracurriculars (ballet, theater, etc.). I never even knew why I wanted to go home. Home felt safe I guess but my parents were emotionally distant. Sometimes that time period feels like the backrooms because of how hauntingly empty and impersonal and standstill everything felt.

That empty, lonely feeling of being dropped somewhere I don’t fit in and left with nothing to do but look busy is still with me, and I don’t even know what “it” is. I feel that way whenever I go to work even though I get along with my coworkers and have had a good performance. I’ve blamed different types of depression and anxiety and so on, but no description really seems to fit or explain why that very short stint of my life feels like it’s been flooding every facet now. Now I feel like a kid trapped in an adult’s body but with the same almost…Grief? Separation anxiety? Boredom? Existential crisis? that never left when I was 5. I feel crazy reassuring myself in my own office at my own desk that my husband will be home when I drive back.