When I’m dead and gone, six feet under, however many years from now, my cause of death will probably be listed as nostalgia. That might sound dramatic to you, but I truly believe it. I’m so nostalgic that I can’t even decide which era of my life I miss the most.
Everyone misses being a kid. But there’s also the classic 2016 era that’s been trending lately: the unicorn frappuccino, colorful Instagram filters, the music, and hours spent scrolling through Musical.ly.
Of course, 2018 and 2019, the VSCO girl phase, scrunchies on my wrist and in my hair, middle school, stickers everywhere, and painting calculators.
Then came the quarantine era, which was devastating for many, but comforting and peaceful for me. And somehow, I already miss recent years like 2024 and 2025, even though they barely feel like they’ve passed.
There are YouTubers who once felt like part of my life who don’t post anymore. There are friends I used to talk to about anything and everything, who I don’t even follow on social media now. There are places I spent so much time in that I’ll probably never step foot in again.
All of these things show up in my thoughts and decide to haunt me in the middle of the night more than I’m willing to admit. (P.S. If anyone ever wants to watch Dolan Twins videos from 2015-2019 with me, DM me.)
I frequently scroll through my TikTok favorites folder, which is filled with videos from 2020 and 2021 that perfectly capture who I was, along with my interests at the time.
I go through old photos like I’m eighty years old, reminiscing about being young. I also often revisit a YouTube playlist I created titled “Comfort,” packed with hours and hours of content I watched nearly a decade ago.
I have an incredibly hard time letting go of things I physically can’t get back. I know that those moments are over. I know I can’t go back to them. So why is it still so difficult to move forward? Maybe it’s not entirely the moments themselves that I miss, but also the way I felt during them.
But lately, I’ve been trying to shift my perspective. If I already miss things that happened just a year or two ago, that probably means one day soon I’ll miss what I’m experiencing right now.
Even the ordinary moments in college, going out to dinner with friends, relaxing in my very first dorm room ever, or laughing over something stupid that only my friends and I would find funny during a study session, are going to become memories I look back on with the same kind of longing.
It’s become a bit of a meme, at least in my friend group, to take a deep sigh, look around the room, and say, “Guys, I needed this,” but sometimes that’s exactly what you have to do.
You have to pause, take in your surroundings, and realize that this is one of those moments your future self will wish they could revisit. And while you can’t freeze time or stop things from changing, you can be present enough to fully experience them while they’re happening.
I’ll probably always be a nostalgic person; I don’t see that changing anytime soon. I’ll always save too many photos while wishing I took more, keep playlists from every phase of my life, and feel a little emotional when I think about the past.
But maybe nostalgia isn’t inherently a bad thing. Maybe it can just be a reminder that my life has been full of moments worth missing. If that’s so, then how lucky am I to be the most nostalgic person on Earth?