Grieving Yourself

Nostalgia sucks

I’m extremely indifferent towards “nostalgia”. The definition of nostalgia: a sentimental longing for the past. To me, it's the balance between grief and comfort. More so grief than anything. There’s a two week period every year where I instantly get burdened with a sudden feeling of pensive sorrow just from the smell of the air outside, and the way it hits my nose. I’ve heard people refer to nostalgia with such positive attitudes, as if it’s heartwarming to long for the unattainable past. To me, it's heavy. Have you heard of looking in the past through rose colored glasses? I fall victim to exactly that. 

Every year on the day before my birthday, I think back to what all the other versions of myself were doing in the past years, who they were, and what they were thinking about. I blame that as the reason why I cry every year on the night going into my birthday. Not much has drastically changed honestly, but I miss the innocence of all the past versions of myself. The youthfulness, the pure excitedness, I may even miss the room to be a bit naive. Every single year you lose pieces of yourself. Life strips you, naturally. It doesn’t have to be completely negative considering the entirety of this process entails major character growth and evolution (hopefully), but we shed ourselves just as snakes shed their skin. The only difference is, they can see the entire process, it's tangible for them. They seem lucky to skip out on the whole human experience, of navigating through the constant stream of conflicting emotion.

Sometimes I find myself wanting to turn back a couple chapters. I don’t miss every version of myself and none of them so desperately, but just the innate fact that I’ve shed pieces of myself that once were my identity, and I’ve changed without realizing, day by day. We’re changing. Our identities are ever-evolving, and sometimes when you feel nostalgic, it's not for the environment you were in itself, it's for the person you were in that environment. 

I think what amplifies my emotions the most when referring to my past and future selves is that my imagination tends to separate each of them into their own whole identities apart from my core self. I'll never be able to sit down with them, talk to them, see them, spend a day with them, truly know what they were feeling or thinking, what their sense of humor was like. Does it make sense to say they may have been me, but I wasn’t them? It’s almost like I’m missing a long lost best friend. I miss them. They leave right before our eyes, so swiftly. Will I ever truly know myself if these versions are always fluctuating?

My best way to collect thoughts is through conversation. Last night, my best friend Electra and I were sitting in the very back corner booth of this 90’s diner. I wanted to go over some of my blog prompts I had written out, and free flow through conversation with her for hopeful inspiration. This one came up. Grieving yourself. The conversation started dully, as you can expect “I miss the old versions of myself sometimes. She was innocent, happier, funnier, livelier.” Then I stopped. I don’t miss her at all. I don’t miss one single old version of myself. I realized I had grown out of her for a reason, and the thing is I WANTED to grow out of her even while being her. So why am I emptily claiming to miss her? Or them? Every version of myself was who I needed to be for that time period, but she was never who I was supposed to be. I will never be those versions again, or even the one I am one right now- forever. 

But I figured it out. I don’t miss the old versions of myself. I love them, but we don’t want them back. The most heart-wrenching part is the lack of goodbyes. I wish I could tell her exactly what I loved about her, how proud I am of her, and maybe prepare her for what is to come. We go in and out of all of these versions of ourselves, and even in the midst of one, we hardly can sit still and acknowledge who we are right now. I don’t miss her, I miss the passage of time. And one day, I'll miss the version of me who is sitting here right now writing this. And I won't even know she’s gone until I miss her. One day I hope to meet the version of myself who no longer grieves her old self, because she is wise enough to hold them all inside of her. She is them all. 

I don’t miss any old version of myself, but maybe I can just appreciate her a little more now that she’s survived.