As of recently, for some unexplained reason, I feel as if I have been extra sentimental in terms of missing people, places, and parts of my life. There are these reoccurring moments, where I feel as if I’m incapacitated, stripped of my autonomy to move, to speak, to think of anything else that doesn’t have to do with the absence of how everything once was.
My mind is monopolized with memories of people and the past that I cannot shake no matter how hard I try. Then, my feelings come rushing in – they strike me like a gust of wind or a hand that yearns to hurt. The abrupt outpour of these thoughts administers a type of emotional whiplash, leaving me with the task of attempting to go about my day. However, I can’t, the only thing I want to do is curl up into the smallest form I can physically achieve as I begin to sob, yearning to hear the comforting voice of my mom or to return to times in my life I’ve deemed ‘simpler’. Essentially to seek solace from this mentally taxing reoccurrence. A process that seems to be out of my control and having no end in sight, which makes me even more emotional because this grievance is one I cannot digress through forever.
Until a few moments ago (before beginning this piece), I had felt the fear of this melodramatic relapse spiraling further and further out of my control.
Yet, as I was completing my nightly routine in preparation to go to bed – I was staring at myself in the mirror as I brushed my hair, when I suddenly had this perspective on the intense nostalgia and yearning I have been experiencing.
This new perspective being, that maybe, all of the sentiment I hold towards people, places, and memories is not meant to torture me. This constant feeling of missing every single thing, could instead be used to move on and comfort myself. Making me realize how extremely lucky I am to have people and parts of my life I miss, because feeling this way makes everything I’ve experienced real. Almost as if these emotions are informing me that the fondness I hold in my heart is there to be of support, not to further my ache.
This ‘epiphany’ I had reminded me of a past conversation I had with a person who is a dear friend of mine. Her unique place in my life will never lose it’s meaning because she is a friend who has known the ‘old’ me and the ‘new’ me. Which is just to say we’ve been friends since high school and have transitioned into college together. Although we don’t speak every day and I’m not entirely up to date on her life (as she is not on mine), when we do finally see each other, it’s like no time has passed at all. We aren’t just two people who used to know each other, we aren’t just two people that came from the same area prior to college, we’re just two people – who find comfort in the unspoken knowledge of each other’s past and the ability to know more about each other’s now (I’m speaking from my view of our relationship, but I am hoping she feels the same because it would be sort of awkward if not…). Anyways, I was confiding in her over text that although I was still with my family, I found myself already missing them, as I was scheduled to return to campus a few days following our text exchange. Of course, being the angel that this person is, she offered me words of comfort and sent me a picture of Winnie the Pooh that has a quote on the top of it. The quote stated, “How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.” – I cannot lie, after reading this quote I balled my eyes out. I cried like a child who had just been told no or a parent/guardian that has just dropped their kid off at Pre-K. The tears, however, weren’t just of the sadness I was already feeling, nor dreading the feelings that would set in at a more intense degree once I returned to school, but because the quote put my ache into a viewpoint I hadn’t considered. The ‘luckiness’ I was gifted with as I missed people/events, the blessing it was for me to have a difficult time parting from the solace of a period in time.
In all honesty, the odds of me coming to this realization, to some degree was influenced by this interaction that had slipped my mind – until suddenly, it hadn’t. This remembrance instead, added to this notion I had come across, as I stared at my face in the mirror. A face that so many throughout my life have said looked identical to my mother’s, as I noticed the sweater I was wearing had been one I stole from one my best friends, while I listened to a song that my dad, sister and I had jammed out to in the car on several occasions – all people and moments I was missing tremendously.
I was surrounded by objects and pieces of my life that connected me to those I was struggling so hard to get over (in terms of my anguish in missing them). This constant effort to forget or even to recreate the feelings I experienced in these fleeting moments of my past, kept coming up short because they weren’t absent. There was a constant impact, that would remain lasting because in some way I was going to always be encompassed by these people, places, and memories. They weren’t only what shaped me into who I am, but my outlook towards the new practices and objects that came into my life, new things I could connect to that of the past – not to recreate but to remind.
I believe my continuous effort to re-create the past was restraining me from experiencing the joys of the present, but also the fondness of my memories, as what made them so special, was the singularity of it. Singularity of the moment in time, including who I was as a person, who those I cherished were as people, and overall the circumstances of that specific period. I and the other people intertwined with my past are not the same entities we once were, I mean we aren’t even in the same geographical location anymore! Thus, we shouldn’t be chasing the aspects of our past in the present, because we’re not the same anymore, we have changed and so should our now. Although I believed that my efforts to relive might have been helping me, it was holding me back from fully embracing my now.
All this to say, there is contentment to be found in longing. A sense of warmth and beauty that surrounds you as your heart aches from nostalgia – for people and places that cannot be duplicated no matter the effort you put forth. This sense of comfort coming from a variety of reasons/grounds. Those being how these occurrences: made you who you are, how your presence shaped someone else, and most of all for the creation of sentimental moments that make you fortunate enough to have difficulty when goodbyes must be said.
Nevertheless, I don’t want this piece to come off as me saying I will never cry about my aching heart again, or that my futile attempts to revive the past and intertwine it with my present will completely cease from this point forward. It’s instead a piece that acknowledges the hurt we all experience and to encourage pulling through by trying to make it a ‘not so constant event’. To allow ourselves to move onwards in our journey, to make more memories and be happy despite the longing that lingers.
The beauty in missing something, longing for a person, and pining for the past is that it solidifies the impact the moment had on you – making everything that happened that much more tangible as you endure the after effects. Embrace the ache, let it drive you to the bliss of now and form new memories you’ll miss in due time, because there will come a period where this very moment will be something you wish for.
So, cheers to our aching hearts and tear filled eyes because we just ‘miss how things were’! Let this remind us of the joys we’ve once experienced and excite us for what is to come!