Nostalgia Is A Disease We All Need To Shake Off

Nostalgia. Nostalgia. Just roll this word in your mouth. What sensations does it provoke? For me it is a word with a flair of dust on it, a faint stink of naphthaline, something you would take out of your grandmother’s closet and stare at it with a mix of disbelief and aversion.

Nostalgia sweeps you off your feet like a gust, thrusting through in a bittersweet and heavy whirl. It grips you in its seamless metal fists with sharp nails and squeezes your heart tight, tight, tighter; then puts a little marble stone in your stomach, which you try to vomit out but it doesn’t come out till some time passes by. Till you give in to nostalgia. Till you go down that memory lane and let the gust take your mind away completely. Ghosts of the past swim around you in a circle, and you can only breathe and wait for it all to pass.

I hate nostalgia, I never let it creep on the backyards of my mind. But all I see around me is people being nostalgic.

Maybe it’s because all my friends are mostly expats in their thirties, maybe these two facts make you idealise nostalgia. When we meet, somebody inevitably starts with “Do you remember that time when we went to the beach after that club, which doesn’t exist anymore, and we were high on MDMA and then there was that afterparty, and say, Sam, was there too?”.

No, I don’t actually. And I don’t want to. I don’t like nostalgia. I think it’s a disease, and I don’t want to indulge in it. It gives me nothing.

 “Remember when we started the morning with champagne and then went to the park and would feed the ducks, and you had that brown dress, and ..”

Yes I do. It sucked completely.

I have absolutely no memories which would make me miss the past. Or get all gooey over it.

Little 10-year old me in a Mickey Mouse T-shirt, a little summer cottage by the sea, swimming all day, jumping with other kids off the swing, making new friends easy, losing them even easier, eternally bruised knees.

I don’t miss that.

Kindergarten? Ew, the stink of the rotten beetroot soup and watching other kids smear snot on the bedside or show their private parts to each other in a fit of curiosity. No, thank you.

School? Early rises, always sleepy, but coffee not allowed yet. Rude teachers, hormones, pimples, the feeling of rejection and misunderstanding from the whole world. Can’t miss it less.

Early twenties? Insecurity, bad choices, saying “yes” to everything, even if you wanted to say “no”. Bad boyfriends, bad salaries. Bad house music. No nostalgia whatsoever!

Home with parents? Let’s not even go down that lane.

I watched T2: Trainspotting 2 the other day and was surprised that also this movie talks about nostalgia. The whole plot is whirling around nostalgia. Every character stares into those ghosts of their past and acting based on their nostalgic feelings. I am partly surprised I hit the spot with the topic, but for me it is just another confirmation that everyone is nostalgic, except for me.

No, I have nothing to be nostalgic about. Maybe not yet?