On The Hauntingly Beautiful Power Of Perfectly-Timed Nostalgia
Is there anything more potent than the sudden overwhelming nostalgia that accompanies a perfectly-timed listen to a melody you haven’t heard in a while? Less than ten minutes ago, I was clicking through some playlists I made over half a decade ago and now I’m reminiscing about a drive across a bridge in a southern city with a man who never loved me back . This specific song brought out a set of sentiments so strong that I felt compelled to write about them, which I suppose brings us here now.
“I would drink a case of it.”
Depending on the time and place, nostalgia hits differently. On this evening—in which I’m personally coming out of a dark place, feeling more content about a Saturday night alone than I’ve felt in a long time, mostly-at-peace with some demons that have been tugging at me for a while—I felt it deep in my chest. First in my breath, then in my muscles, and it spread throughout my shoulders, my neck, and then came to rest in my eyes, causing me to cry for no reason in particular. It’s an intense longing, the kind that leaves a ringing in your ears, the type to cause you to involuntarily curl your fingers to a fist as if to grasp it before it leaves. If I could bottle this moment that a late-era Death Cab song was able to dislodge from its final resting place in the deepest recesses of my mind—a moment that wasn’t great to begin with to be honest; it was kind of sad and surrounded by other decisively shitty moments—I would. And I would drink a case of it. Why is that?
I am certainly not nostalgic for these eyebrows.
I don’t dust off out my ancient Greek skills much (mostly because I don’t remember much except for verb conjugations and the etymology of key words in often-misquoted Bible verses) but one thing I do recall is the fact that the word nostalgia has roots in two Greek words: nóstos, which means “a homecoming” (think: a return to home) and álgos, meaning, “pain.” (Or rather, “an ache.”) What a beautiful combination of words. It’s a phrase that’s been reclaimed from its first iteration as a word describing what was thought to be a physical malady in war-addled soldiers and has now come to describe a plaintive admiration of the past. (Yeah, I just learned that word.)
I have an idea. It’s a highly personal one so I’m not sure if it’ll hold water outside of the context of my unique worldview, but I think that the borderline obsession that we (as a society, especially my fellow millennials) have with nostalgia is because we’re presented with—not to go all red-or-blue-pill on you—two choices.
“I think of them as the in-between moments that got me by until the next in-between moment. ”
The first is that we can be hometown lifers, or something vaguely adjacent to it. I’m not speaking ill of these people per se, but it’s a lifestyle that’s so far from my own that I can’t really fathom it. It seems like this choice tends to go hand-in-hand with multi-level-marketing schemes and an irritable amount of enthusiasm for Thanksgiving Eve get-togethers at the hometown dive. In a sense, I’m a little jealous. For a few reasons, I feel like I don’t really have a “hometown.” Additionally, these are the kinds of people we tend to think of when it comes to this unproductive, self-serving nostalgia. “Remember when I could toss a pigskin half a mile?” “My grade seven boyfriend is the one who got away.” I’m going to go ahead and say that this is not the kind of nostalgia that I’ll be discussing, mostly because I don’t even know what it is.
The second choice is the one I’m choosing to address here: the one those of us made when we have decided to take a “sadder but wiser” approach to life. Maybe it’s because we were ugly in middle school. Maybe because we don’t want to remember high school because we were bullied into eating disorders that have taken a decade to shake. It’s the kind of nostalgia that can only be formed when you’re given tiny glimmers of light in an otherwise—for whatever reason—dark existence. I think of them as the in-between moments that got me by until the next in-between moment. Not to get too self-referential here, but I once likened to this sort of nostalgia to the volleyball from Castaway. Something to give you hope. Even after its served its purpose, it’s incredibly difficult to leave behind.
I think this explains why I like to listen to the same seven sad songs ad nauseam that I drowned myself in when I was a much sadder person. There are so many songs that made me feel like I wasn’t the only haplessly in love or most unfortunate person in the world. Some songs that just “got me” and made me feel known when I was afraid to dig deep and know myself and the true depths of what I was going through. One of the best and worst things about having a blog that’s outlasted many relationships and bouts of unrequited love is that it’s all documented. After listening to that song, I read this post about the man who didn’t love me back. First, I laughed at myself for being such a public sad sack. Then, I was amazed that any of my previous employers clearly did not do their due diligence before hiring me, because these are clearly the ramblings of an unwell person. Then, I was a little jealous of this slightly-less-jaded version of myself, and in doing so, I felt nostalgia for the nostalgia.
“But at least I’m now self-aware? ”
I’ll continue to have a love/hate relationship with nostalgia, especially the kind that makes me long for the simple days when a man rejected me outright and I’d bounce back knowing I was a damn catch and it’s his loss (back then, I was not, he honestly made the right decision to not pursue my unstable ass), I lacked the experience that would eventually come to deter me from making loftier goals (I’m thankful that I had the balls to pursue a career in journalism immediately after dropping out of art school—I don’t think I’d be able to do something like that now), and I could continue moving forward without standing in my own way. But at least I’m now self-aware?
More than anything, what I—and you—can do when I’m struck by sudden debilitating bouts of nostalgia-induced lethargy is to get better at splitting the difference. I can admire the shameless audacity of a less-well-adjusted version of myself while keeping my wits about me. I’ll be content to turn moments into a home worth re-visiting, but not so comfortable that I get complacent. How do I do that? Not sure just yet, but the sentiment is there and I think that’s what matters more than anything else.