Thoughts On Nostalgia

… before I move from Part 1 to Part 2.

It may seem interesting or odd that I am so fixated on nostalgia. Does it seem like I am? It feels like I am. A friend said to me once, “Sheila, you are in love with the past.” This can be a great thing. Why? I have great memories, and I cherish them and honor them. Not only do I cherish and honor them, but I protect my memories fiercely. I will not have them messed with, and I will not have anyone try to get in there and muck it up. You think people can’t mess up the past? Oh yes, they can. And so if I have a precious memory, one of those save-it-for-a-rainy-day memories, I guard it like the Holy Grail. You want to see Sheila tear you to shreds with her bare hands? Stomp on a memory she holds dear. Watch her go NUTS.

But this obsession with the past can also be a torment, for obvious reasons. I have a hard time letting things go. I am now convinced that it’s just how I’m wired, and so I have accepted that this not-letting-go thing is one of my great struggles in life. For me, “letting go” eventually takes an enormous act of WILL, because time don’t heal SHITE, in my opinion. So over the years, as I have learned from my mistakes, etc., I have tried to assert my will earlier and earlier in the letting-go process. I have realized that if I wait for time to do its job, then months will pass with me still mourning the loss of whatever it is … and I no longer want to spend months in that fashion. So I give myself time limits, I force myself to do things I don’t want to do (go out with friends, go running, whatever) – I know I won’t enjoy these activities, but I have become a late convert to the “fake it til you make it” school of human psychology. I can’t snap out of things, but I can expedite the process of getting over a disappointment, I can talk myself off the ledge easier, etc.

Regardless. There remains this overwhelming tenderness for the past – a tenderness bordering on pain. The pain gets worse when I’m vaguely dissatisfied in my present-day life (which makes sense), and so suddenly, it seems that everything back then was so beautiful and everything now SUCKS. A lot of my thoughts around the past take the form of: “Day-um, I had no idea how good I had it back then.” You know, you take things for granted. This is one of the privileges of youth. But nostalgia, and yearning for what is back there, and pondering the past, and thinking about and writing about the past etc … is one of the “themes” of the literary conceit that is my life. It’s weird. Sometimes it’s a blessing. And other times it’s a curse.

I’ve noticed that it’s the weirdest things that sometimes remain, the weirdest most unexpected things that time refuses to heal. I think of these “things” as what is left behind in the sieve, after you shake out the water and the dust. Something ALWAYS remains, and with me, at least, it’s not always the most obvious thing. For example: I’ve had 2 year-long relationships that I don’t remember as vividly as the night with the doppelganger. I can’t think of that doppelganger night without a vague echo-stab of pain. (Vague … not sharp. I don’t want to make it seem like I am still staggering about, crying in public about him. No. But still. There’s a vague echo-stab whenever he pops into my head). It was ONE NIGHT. 8 hours of my life. We played charades and Trivial Pursuit, and years later, I still get an echo-stab? What the feck is that? I know it’s because of what came afterwards, and so I can’t think about our first meeting with anything even approaching joy. Our joy in meeting one another is completely shadowed by the awfulness that followed. But still. It was an 8 hour encounter, and it hurts me to think about it. I can feel the bruise in my heart right as I type this. Meanwhile, I run into major ex-boyfriends at parties and I’m like: “Hey, what’s up, good to see you, how’ve you been…” Kiss on the cheek, casual conversation … Strange.

Maybe I’m shallow. But I don’t think so.

Certain events work on us in very subconscious ways, and it is not until years after the fact that you can discern what was really going on back there. The doppelganger, I believe, is like that. There has to be some reason that it was so huge, and that we got so entangled so quickly, and then – just as quickly – could never speak to one another Ever. Again. It was a whirlwind, and in chronological time it makes no sense. But some poet said you count time by heartbeats, and that was what that Trivial Pursuit night was about. Time accordion-folded out, stretched, elongated … And I’m not sure that the repercussions of that night, or what I was supposed to learn that night, are clear to me even now. A part of me thinks: “That was so unnecessary, God. I mean, really.” (Talking to God there.) “I mean, I think it’s a bit of an overkill, God, to put that man in my path. I really do.” Let me be clear: I almost never think about doppelganger anymore. I’m on this newsletter thing he edits, so I read that, but other than that, we have zero contact. We tried – once – he invited me to some event, I went, and it was – to put it mildly – a disaster. It was awful. I had thought I was fine, and seeing him just confirmed how incredible I thought he was, how much we clicked … It was the worst possible thing I could have done. Through that night, I realized I could not be normal with him or casual. Nope. I can be casual with some people, but him? Not a chance, bub. I don’t think of him (when I do think of him) with malevolence, or bitterness, or anger. He didn’t do anything wrong. He didn’t betray me, deceive me, mess with my mind. No, it just plain old didn’t work out. That’s all. There is no blame here. He’s on my mind right now because he is, primarily, what comes to my mind when I think about the tenderness-pain thing I have going on with certain events in my past.

It seems to me that something is there for me to be learned.

With other boyfriends, everything was much more on the surface, and the lessons were more immediate. And so there’s no need to look back, to excavate the event, to examine the findings at the bottom of the seive, put them on little scales, try to determine the value …

But with other events – (doppelganger being the first example) it’s all about examining that sieve over and over again. What’s left? Is it valuable? Do I need this? Is it gold? Or can I toss it back? What exactly was the impact of that event?

Therefore, my intense interest in nostalgia, and how it works.