I’ve never been good at dealing with change. As each phase of my life passes by I always feel myself mourning it. I miss who I was at that moment in my life, I miss the people who I was surrounded by and most importantly I miss how I felt during that time.
Nostalgia hits when you least expect it to. It hits me when I hear Nintendo music and remember all the times I played Mario Kart with my brother as kids. It hits me when I smell chlorine, reminding me of the eight years I spent swimming competitively. It hits me when I wear my favorite sweatshirt that I bought when touring colleges. And it hits me when I pass the road I always used to turn down to go to my old friend’s house.
As freshman year of college is coming to an end, I know I will miss all of these moments so much next year. I know I will feel nostalgic for the comfort of everything around me. I will miss living in Haggett Hall, dining hall dinners, and movie nights. I know I will be nostalgic about these moments in a year. It can be difficult to watch the years pass and to know time will never slow down. That things will never be the same.
When these feelings are so strong they can be hard to ignore. When I feel nostalgic it’s overwhelming. There is an inexplicable feeling to miss the past. It’s crushing inside knowing I can’t go back. It is hard to just get up and continue on with my day when I feel like this. How do we deal with something when there is no solution, no way to fix it? There is only one answer: to keep going. And that is exactly what I do. Nostalgia is something that I know I won’t ever stop feeling. So I keep going knowing that there will be even more moments I am nostalgic for. And even though these feelings can feel horrible in the moment, they represent something great. I have so many beautiful memories that I miss, and that is wonderful. To know I have lived so much. The only solution to nostalgia is to keep things in perspective and keep going. To remember those times but to know that the future holds so much.