Context: I posted a photo on WeChat of an event that happened a long long time ago to me. I was living a completely different life back then. Different country, job, I was much younger etc. It's surreal looking at the photo as it's just hard to believe that that was a period in my life.
Under the photo I left a caption 我的上一辈子. It is a kind of a simile or a metaphor, where I'm trying to express how surreal it is that that was once my life.
Anyway a Chinese friend got back to me and started explaining how it implies reincarnation and I should use a phrase more along the lines of "my younger years" or "an earlier part of my life".
But that is not what I was trying to express. I'm not trying to express "my past", I'm trying to express:
"although this really happened to me it is so hard to believe that, it's as if it were a faint memory of a past life".
To native and fluent Chinese speakers, would you understand what I meant by this caption or do you agree that it is flat out wrong?