Nostalgia is the ache for a future that never happened.
Simon Reynolds
The havoc WREAKED by NOSTALGIA.
Nostalgia never comes screaming at you. It arrives politely. One song from a past life. A scent you didn’t want. The image of a young version of yourself, that you hadn’t thought of for years, but somehow recognise immediately. And in that recognition, a part of “you” cracks. Because, in fact, nostalgia not only makes you remember what was, but it also makes you remember what ended without even asking you for permission.
Well, if nothing else kills me, nostalgia will. It’s not that the past was kinder, but because it was unfinished. The thing is back then I had no idea of what I’d gone through. I didn’t know those moments were fleeting. I lived them as if they would never end. That is the cruelty: nostalgia is a punishment for innocence.
Missing the Person You Were Allowed to Be.
It’s not that you miss people or places (well, lowkey, I do). What hurts is missing the version of yourself that was there. The one who didn’t flinch at the sound of a phone ring. The one who spontaneously took joy without worrying about losing it. The one who didn’t treat happiness as a scarce and fragile thing.
That person is no longer with you. Doesn’t mean they passed away, but worse. They are beyond reach.
Nostalgia makes you grieve your own self while you are still alive. It presents you the evidence that you once existed without the protective covering which now you are mistaking for sophistication. And you cannot go back to that self without first unlearning all the survival tools that kept you alive ever since.
So, you don’t even make an attempt.
The Past as a Weapon, Not a Comfort.
Nostalgia has a reputation of being a solace. It is only true if nostalgia is superficial. When it’s real, nostalgia is brutal. It manipulates memory so that the present feels lacking. It removes the suffering and leaves a version of happiness so pure that it almost feels like a reproach.
You begin to compare everything to something that has already disappeared. Conversations seem less profound. Laughter seems artificial. You wonder whether life really got tougher, or you just became too wise to enjoy it in the same way.
Nostalgia doesn’t inquire if you are prepared. It simply unlocks a door and there you are caught between the old you and the new you, and the gap is just too much to bear.
Loving What Can No Longer Love You Back.
There is something cruel about loving a time that cannot love you back. You live it over and over again in your memory, but you know it will never recognise your existence. You go through old pictures, old texts, old versions of yourself, longing for a surprise, even though you are aware that there will be none.
Actually, nostalgia is a one-sided intimacy.
You refuse to accept that emotionally something that has moved on has no place for you anymore. Each time you come back and there is nothing, you are hollower than before. It is not out of the memory being a bad one but because it is a perfect one. It no longer needs you. You are the only one still extending your hand.
Regret Disguised as Longing.
Once, nostalgia severed itself from the memory to become the remorse. The remorse of the unsaid words because there was time, the times unnoticed because they were considered normal, the people presumed to always be there.
It is not being remembered that makes you go over the scenes in your mind but being changed in such a way that they turn out differently. You merely create new endings. Good ones. Gentle outcomes. And if the reality stays unchanged, the sorrow becomes even greater.
Through nostalgia, the death lesson is learned too late: it is a costly thing to be aware. Awareness will always extract further payment from you, even if you try your best to resist.
The Exhaustion of Carrying Two Lives.
Having nostalgia within means being in possession of two timelines. One in which life is so much easier, and one where you are wiser. One in which you are still naive enough to be letting hope freely, and one in which hope is something that is measured, negotiated, and restrained.
You don’t desire to go back; you just want to be relieved. But, by no means, does nostalgia decrease the burden. It forces you to carry yet one more self. To mourn silently one more separate life.
You don’t share it a lot because people think of nostalgia as something innocent. They cannot perceive how it makes loneliness more acute. How it persuades you that the best parts of you are all in the past.
The Quiet Truth No One Says Out Loud.
People say nostalgia is all about looking back, but I think it’s really more about how the now just doesn’t feel right anymore. Like home is slipping away or something.
When things keep letting you down in the present, you turn to those old memories for comfort. But then it traps you, sort of like a safe place that starts closing in. You end up stuck emotionally, always comparing what you have today to what used to be, instead of just dealing with the day as it comes.
That backward pull, it wears you out. If anything gets me, nostalgia probably will, because it brings back these old parts of life that aren’t there anymore. And you have to hang out with their remains/after-images/shadows whatever you name them.
And fun fact, not in a big dramatic way you know, just bit by bit instead.
Even if not completely but enough that trying to move on starts feeling wrong, like you’re turning your back on something important, very important (and incomplete). It seems even more excruciating when you think about it this way, but yes also, everyone ain’t Vaibhav Chaudhary.
Discover more stories on Her Campus at MUJ. More articles by me coming soon at Vaibhav Chaudhary at HCMUJ; he who watches the world and its miracles closely, noticing what slips between moments, between the infinite realities.