Nauseating Nostalgia
Welcome to my first post!
I had planned on something different but I think the best work comes randomly. I sit here with dried tears after watching a feel good/heart wrenching TV series. Over the past week or so, two words kept popping into my head: nostalgia and loss. I’ve said it many times before, I can not fucking STAND the feeling of nostalgia. It make me nauseous. It could happen when you pick up a scent of something and you just can’t identify where you’ve smelled it before. Maybe a lip gloss from your childhood, a toy you once had. Or, when you hear a song and suddenly you’re directly back in the place you first experienced it. Personally, I now dread hearing certain Disney songs, even if they’re just instrumental ones from the parks. Why you ask? How the fuck is Disney music triggering?
Because. There are great memories that can develop negative associations over time, horrible memories that can remain horrible and sometimes, the good times stay just that. We often don’t know until the times are in the past.
I recently lost one of my three grandmothers. A flood of stories told by family and friends, had me struggling with processing good memories while feeling so much pain. How can you accept a good past if the present doesn’t agree? If someone is no longer in our lives but still here, does that taint our past with them? This is what I mean about nausea. I guess it’s simply situational. The show/book I previously mentioned is Daisy Jones and the Six. I won’t share spoilers, but it concludes with a very nostalgically heavy scene that suggests how someone should move forward. It made me revert to a deep thought I once had- I know it will sound morbid.
The thought was, that eventually I may have to be on this earth without the person I love- and I prayed to God that I would go first. Imagine those thoughts at this age when we are supposed to be young, happy and healthy. What I’m trying to figure out is- when the thought of loss before it even occurs is obviously horrific, how are you supposed to accept things once the loss happens? Looking back on the past can be torture or wonderful. While that nostalgic feeling can break your heart, it can also teach you the difference between good pain and bad pain. Once you identify your feelings and grasp where you currently stand with them, you can then decide what memories you’re going to let hurt you and heal you. Whether it’s accepting the life a loved one lived before passing, grieving nostalgic moments that have different meanings now, it’s better to feel; than not at all (cheesey as it sounds.) Our actions/ feelings before and during grieving can be a living, breathing grey area.
Sometimes the nostalgia can be the light in that.
