Sometimes it’s nice to remember the young, crazy, partying version of me. I love my life but from time to time I do get nostalgic for who I was before I became the responsible, psychologically healthy, wife-and-mother type. It’s like the person I was back then died and I never got to mourn her.
7 responses to “Nostalgia ”
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I’m afraid to ask what happens when no young version of yourself was crazy & partying. LMAO.
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Then you feel nostalgic for the serious and studious young you…
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My own youth seems like another life. I have so little contact (on purpose) with ancestral home or childhood friends, that it all seems like it happened to someone else on the rare occasion when I reminisce. The act of immigration is a big part of this giant chasm between the young me and the middle-aged me, because it’s not just the aging; it’s becoming an adult, mom, etc., in a whole different culture than the one I was brought up in.
I don’t know if this is healthy or not, but I have pretty serious barriers against nostalgia in place (e.g., never listen to music from back home, don’t read anything in native language, don’t follow their politics) because I can turn into a weepy mess when I do let myself feel the feels, and there’s no point to it, since there’s no way back (in more ways than one).
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Well, I’m not nostalgic for anything — not the day before yesterday, or all the cascading decades preceding it. Never having a spouse or children, I never had to grow up. At the appropriate times, I just put on the appropriate wardrobe: physician, psychiatrist, senior military commander, and finally, nice old man.
I’m VERY happy that I got away with being such a wanton idiot in my my younger days — did everything I wanted, whenever I wanted — and somehow got away with it all, without a single scratch or scar.
Do I have ANY desire to go back and try to run that high-risk course again, like an episode in a bad Twilight Zone episode? Stupid question!
There’s nothing in the world deader than yesterday. Count the treasure that you’ve accumulated, and let the expired credit go.
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I feel like I have lived two lives — the pre-hubby life and the post-hubby life. The pre-hubby life was one in which I surrounded myself with very negative people and fed off of it, as if the only thing in life were the consumption and spewing of negativity. After meeting hubby, I introduced him to people in my life. He said, “Do they all treat you like that?” I said, “Like what?” and he said, “God, they’re all so mean and negative. You deserve to be treated better.” It had never occurred to me that I should be treated (and treat others) nicely.
So I stopped spending time with those people and got more positive friends. Every now and then I attract another negative person, and I find myself being dragged down. I dump them and try to move on. I usually only ever have 2-3 close friends at a time (and also hubby, who is my best friend). I spend time being around people who are life affirming instead of totally depressing. At least, that’s my goal.
I still struggle with negativity, but ever since hubby pointed it out that having more positive people around might help, I’ve struggled more effectively — with more awareness. It makes a huge difference.
And no, I don’t long for those bad old days at all.
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Is your jacket a freudian symbolism of your young days, hence why you unconsciously let it go?
For me it was my long hair…. now I wear very short hair. I was never the party kind but I when I had long hair, I traveled adventourously, meaning turn up at the airport and choose your destination right and there, with no bag and came back maybe three months later (once having spend it in the Amazon jungle)…
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It’s definitely something Freudian since I can’t recover the memory at all.
It’s uncanny.LikeLike
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
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