nostalgia is a disease

and I don't want to be cured.

It’s a rainy Wednesday morning in the summer of 2018. Legs dangling over my new queen bed, a welcome replacement for my old rickety twin one from childhood, I stand up to open my window just a smidge. Enough to hear the heavy rain and smell the glorious mixture of humid air and central a/c. I inhale deeply, welcoming this touch of nature swirling its way into my room. The lush, dripping greenery outside forms a curtain of privacy and I feel giddy at being in my own little world. Back in my bed, my silver laptop lights up against my dark purple sheets that match my dark purple walls, and I press ‘play’ on the newest episode of Castle Rock, relishing in the feeling of the dark, stormy weather providing the perfect atmosphere for the horror series’ opening credits. After this, I will work on my Modern Family spec script for my television writing class. My father just had open heart surgery and my brother will visit soon. There is nothing particularly special about this moment but I want to relive it forever.

it’s only right I include an image from sleepy-nostalgia on tumblr.

nostalgia is comfort

I’m always telling my mother she’s stuck in the past. My entire life, she has filled every conversation with some story, anecdote, or memory spanning her almost 70 years of life. My brother and I roll our eyes when she tells us she honestly wouldn’t mind changing diapers if it means getting to raise us again. Any object, no matter how broken, damaged, or insignificant, is deemed a relic worthy of preservation in her eyes. For her, the past remains alive in outward expressions, and instead of examining why she clings so hard to these things, she excuses it by telling me the dreaded, “You’ll understand when you’re older.”

I think I understand now, but in a different way. I can be outwardly nostalgic when the occasion calls for it, like when it comes up in conversation or when I’m having a moment with an old item before tossing it in the donation box. But most of my nostalgia is internal, taking shape in reveries and routines. I may not show it as much but I can be just as nostalgic as my mom. Maybe in certain ways, we all are. When facing the unknown, all we have is what’s there to look back on. The driving force behind nostalgia is the desire for comfort, but this can manifest in many ways. Not all of them are healthy.

nostalgia is escapism

When I’m having a tough day, I replay memories like an old Super8 film. I let them wrap their arms around me, filling me with warmth and hoping they will shield me against any of my current predicaments or feelings. Even on good days I will let my mind wander, happily rejoicing in a memory that was triggered by something in the present. I lull myself to sleep with old memories so that my brain has something to focus on instead of its many anxieties. The memories will become so vivid that for a moment, I won’t be able to tell their difference from reality. I really am back in my old room that summer of 2018, alive in a way that I haven’t been since, empty of worry and full of potential.

nostalgia is time travel

“Remember when you worked here in high school and got sick because you thought ordering a five-way and three cheese coneys on your lunch break was a good idea?” I ask my brother, Matt, laughing as I bite into one of said cheese coneys.

We’re at Skyline, Cincinnati’s local chili joint, for one last lunch before Matt flies home to Texas. When we had decided on it earlier, I suggested not just going to any one of the million locations across the city, but the location we went to growing up. The place hasn’t been remodeled at all since its opening and I hope it stays that way; it makes it easier to remember. I think of all the times I came here; before football games as a young girl going to support her brother in the marching band; as a high school student myself furiously shoveling forkfuls of food into my mouth before running to make it back to class on time; rolling through the drive-thru after high school, ordering dinner for one because everyone I grew up with moved away.

I think about all the different versions of myself who have walked into this restaurant, each of them wondering when would be the last. I imagine each of them sitting in their respective booths at the same time, all of us joined together by a craving for chili from a familiar place. The past versions of me, now all lined up at the counter while I stand by the checkout, are looking at the current version of me. They ask “Is our future what we dreamed of?” and I look back at them and say, “I can’t tell you, one, because of the rules of time travel, and two, each of you will want to hear a different answer to that question and I don’t want to take away the beauty of finding out for yourself.”

nostalgia is media consumption

Media is perhaps the easiest way for me to capture the past. So many of my memories are tied to what I was watching or reading at the time. The random early Saturday morning I ate Graeter’s Mocha Chip ice cream for breakfast and watched I Love Lucy on old VHS tapes before a house flooding destroyed them. The evenings at my grandma’s house in Texas when we’d watch shows like The Addams Family and Wheel of Fortune after dinner. The first time I read an Elena Ferrante novel (The Lying Life of Adults). The hours I’d spend playing GameCube and Wii with friends, or the school nights I’d stay up late playing my GameBoy, then later my DS. Just the sound of those loading screens now immediately takes me back. I used to follow accounts on Tumblr dedicated to media from the past, and when I really want to get the nostalgia gears going, I’ll image search “2014 Tumblr.”

By consuming the same media, I can go back in time, recapturing a memory tied to it or how I felt the first time I experienced it. Sometimes I’ll watch old videos from my favorite youtubers to recapture what it was like to discover them. It’s almost like a drug, this easy accessibility to the media that has shaped my life and my mind. Everyone gets preoccupied about not having enough time to read all the books, watch all the movies, listen to all the music. I get preoccupied about not having the time to re-consume these things. When will be the last time I get to re-experience these works of art that have brought me so much comfort and joy? There’s no way of knowing, and that’s terrifying.

nostalgia is an anchor

Maybe it’s leftover effects from the pandemic, or some combination of getting older, isolation, or depression but I can’t process time the same way anymore. I barely remember what day it is and by the time I can process that a new month has started, that month is almost over. December 2024 was only a couple of months ago but it feels a million years away. Where did last year go? It slipped through my fingers while I was trying to get my bearings. If I try to recall specific details from the recent past, I come up empty. I remember what I did (barely) but how did I feel? What did my food taste like? What was the air like?

For some reason the far past is easier to recall than the recent one, and that is with the help of things like media, but it’s also because these events are firmly cemented in time. Nostalgia emerges from the fear of change. Even when I want things to change, I want them to change on my terms, which is a fool’s wish. I can recall memories from the distant past like they happened yesterday because my brain has laid their foundation brick by brick each time I recall them. They are safe in my mind because I know what has happened in between my past self and my current self. With the knowledge that everything we know will just become a blur comes the comfort of hindsight. But the ache comes with it too.

nostalgia is loneliness

Sometimes when I’m alone, nothing can cure the dull ache of loneliness like recalling a memory with people I no longer speak to. Sometimes it’s not even conscious, the memory is triggered by something. This is a double-edged sword, comforting and hurting me at the same time. You used to have it so good, the memory whispers to me, a touch of cruelty on her lips. For a moment I forget why the people in my memory aren’t in my present, why I no longer speak to them. I just remember the good, even if it’s tinged with a little bad now. Even if I wanted to, it feels impossible to reach out. Where would I even begin? And why do I recall memories of people who are gone and not people still here? It’s like my brain refuses to recognize the good in my life.

nostalgia is comparison

An old close friend from childhood got married last summer and I found out about it the way all old close friends who’ve grown apart do: I saw the photos on social media. As I scrolled through them, I was so overcome with happiness for her, but also sadness for me. Not because I wanted to be getting married but because I wished we hadn’t lost touch. As preposterous as it sounds, I wished I had been invited to the wedding and I imagined a world in which we were still close enough that it would happen. I don’t know how to reach out now. We’re so far apart and have such different lives. That also makes me sad because at one point, our lives were very similar.

The girl I used to spend hours with every week is somewhere inside the woman in the wedding photos who now has a last name my youth wouldn’t recognize. I want to go back to when we were close, when it felt like we both had the same amount of potential. Sometimes I can’t shake the feeling that if I could just go back to a specific moment and change the trajectory of things, I could transplant myself into her life and thus make my life as amazing as hers looks. I ache wondering how much of our friendship she remembers, if anything at all. She’s probably so busy making great new memories that she doesn’t have time to reminisce on our years together. I, of course, have no way of proving this and am only imagining things based off of my own perceptions of her life, fueled by my continued feelings of aimlessness and inadequacy. If I was doing more with my life, then I wouldn’t waste it looking at how others have grown.

nostalgia is grief

I lost many family members when I was young. In some cruel reverse order, I grieve them even more as time passes because the older I get, the more I realize just how little time I got with them. They never got to see me grow into myself, I never got to know them on a deeper level. Experiences my older brother and cousins had with them, I can only dream about. So I cling to the few memories I do have of them. I drag pieces of the past into the present, desperately trying to merge the two.

The other day I made Italian sausage soup as a way to relive the night my uncle cooked it for us, and was brought to tears when I realized I would never be able to make it for him. As I ate it, I imagined what life would be like if I did. Bustling around his kitchen, expertly adding the right ingredients as he watches me, thinking of how much I’ve grown up. But he’ll only ever see me as a young girl.

My father is in a nursing home now. Every time I visit him, I wonder if it will be the last. I remember our days together in anticipation of the inevitable. This is the most extreme example but I do this with every relationship I have, knowing that one day, things will change. People will grow apart, or move away, or die. This anticipatory grief festers like a scab that I want to pick at and peel off. The knowledge that everything ends is supposed to be a blessing, a reminder to cherish what we have. It’s merely a band-aid.

nostalgia is ritual

I have to watch Jurassic Park and Nope every July 4th. That’s my way of celebrating an otherwise uninteresting holiday. With Nope especially, I think of the summer I first saw it, and then every summer I watched it after that. There is nothing special about this routine, it’s just something I randomly made up one day and then unconsciously decided I must stick to. The same can be said for driving past my uncle’s old house every time we visit Texas. The house first belonged to my grandmother and then after she died, my uncle bought it. It was in our family for over 50 years and then just… not. We decided to drive past it for old time’s sake the year after my uncle died, and then without a second thought, it became a ritual.

A few weeks ago, me and my mom were in Texas. It was the last day of our trip and we were running severely behind. I was stuffing my face with Whataburger when I realized we hadn’t seen the house yet. With plenty of my meal still left, I briefly considered driving there and watching the house as I finished eating. But I shook that thought from my head; that would just be insane. It was 9 p.m. when my mom, back from dinner with her high school friends, was ready to leave. I hit the gas, thankful to be out of there, until I remembered we still hadn’t seen the house yet. The turn for the highway was coming soon. I could go on it, or turn back around and see the house. I turned back around.

The street was pitch black, with not even a streetlight to guide us. We could barely make out the house’s shadow. But just being in proximity to it filled my heart with warmth, and I briefly pictured my younger self running up to the front door with all my luggage in hand, eagerly ringing the doorbell and waiting for the embrace of loved ones. As I drove away, I thought about how we had always made time to see the house in the past, but this trip it was almost treated as an afterthought. Were we forgetting?

nostalgia is our only option

How much time do you spend online these days? Scrolling your phone? Spending yet another night inside? Somewhere along the way we stopped going outside. We stopped getting to know our neighbors. We stopped having the ritual of school to go to, a place full of people our age we could talk to. For me personally, I’ve never had to work in a physical location so I don’t know what that social climate is like (and it seems quite scary for my socially anxious self). Friendships have fallen apart, people have moved away. It’s become harder to start a conversation face to face. Romance has largely migrated online, creating a false intimacy through text messages and algorithms.

Because of the (political, social, economical, ecological) state of the world, we have less means and incentive to go outside now. What kind of memories can we make if we’re stuck inside? What kind of meaningful connections can we form? I’m not saying all online relationships are bad or that it’s completely impossible to have a drink with friends or that you should keep shitty people around for the sake of not being alone. And it’s always been harder for marginalized groups to feel safe outside. All I’m saying is that it seems so much harder now, for nearly everyone. So what else can we do besides comfort ourselves with the past?

nostalgia is a construct

Do you ever feel nostalgic for time periods you weren’t alive to witness? I catch myself dreaming of what it must have been like to dance in a disco in the 1970s, live in the warm palettes of autumnal suburbia in the 1990s, or attend one of the legendary mid-century Hollywood parties Eve Babitz wrote about. This is because nostalgia, though stemming from real feelings, is a construct. An idealized reality. Your brain is hard at work finding the silver linings of past memories and lost time periods.

This is why media portrays the 1980s as a neon carnival rather than what it really was: brown wall paneling and cigarette smoke. This is why people feel nostalgic for the early days of lockdown because for once in their lives, they got to rest. It’s why I fondly remember my last years of high school even though I was sinking into a pit of anxiety and depression. The good memories are just that: good memories to help you remember what to remain alive for, because there will always be good and bad.

nostalgia is a gift

To be nostalgic is to have the luxury of time. Time to exist in the company of loved ones, time to explore, time to discover. Time to exist at all, even if it’s during the most painful moments one can experience. None of us asked to be born, yet here we are. Be thankful to whatever you believe in that you’re still here. Because it means you’re still alive to change things, to find more loved ones, to discover more about yourself and the world. To make new memories that you’ll one day be nostalgic for.

nostalgia is a disease (but there is a cure)

Nostalgia is inextricably linked with the present and future because the way you remember the past is informed by your present and how you feel about the future. Nostalgia happens when we become aware that time is passing, so we look to the past because it has tricked us into thinking we’re running out of time. That’s just not true. Time is passing, but you’re not running out of it. The sand steadily falls through the hourglass all the same. It’s why I catch myself when I think about the past too much. I don’t really want to go back in time because I don’t want to risk changing what I do like about my life now, even if sometimes it feels like the positives are shrinking.

An overabundance of nostalgia stems from a lack of something. What do you feel like you lack right now? Friends? Romantic partners? Career success? A passion for life? It could be anything. Now why do you think wasting away thinking of the past will solve this lack? Maybe you don’t think it will solve anything, it’s just a way to cope. I’m all too familiar with that. But these memories aren’t a substitute for life.

Did you know there’s a term called ‘Nostalgic Depression’? It’s not an official diagnosis but it’s used to describe the feelings and behaviors associated with the negative aspects of nostalgia. Things like loneliness, social isolation, anxiety, hopelessness, and regret. But like with everything, there is a spectrum, a balance. You haven’t lost whatever you feel nostalgic for. Yes, people may be gone, times may be different, and the horrors we face every day seem to multiply. But everything you think you can only get from the past is still in you, because it was experienced by past you! You still have time to form new connections, chase your dreams, try new things. Make new memories. You carry it all with you.

Now you’re probably saying, “Well bitch, if you’re such an expert, give us some tips!” It will be different for everyone. For me, I’m trying to focus on living in the moment by journaling, filling my time with activities, and having things to look forward to. I also try reaching out to the people in my life regularly. It’s daunting, but a couple years ago, my cousin and I just started texting on and off, and now we talk every day. So it can be easier than you think.

As much as nostalgia comforts me, it can drown me too. I’d like to keep memories like trinkets in my pocket, not a noose around my neck. The fact of the matter is, change is happening. Time is moving forward and she will take us along with her no matter what. Do you want her to drag you along at her feet kicking and screaming, or would you prefer to walk alongside her, holding hands?

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Perfect timing as always, Alessia Cara has a song on her new album, “Subside”, all about the passage of time. I’m already feeling myself getting nostalgic for the first time I heard it…which was a week ago.

Is it already over?
Sidewalk scraping my knees
Going halves on a tangerine
Wanna know why everything worth holding
Turns to a blur in a distance
That's why I'm clenching my fists
I know all this is what it is
You don't get the same day twice
Still every night
There's something that won't heal
Don't feel right

Nothing good ever lasts
The girl I was never came back
Staying up, falling off track
So much I wish I knew
Flew too close to the sun
Who I was, she was made of
Threw a punch, had to take one

It's what they say
Time's just pocket change
That I'm wasting away
Grieving what's still alive
And fighting with an ache that won't subside

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Nathan Zed, a longtime favorite of mine, has an excellent video covering nostalgia that touches on how technology shapes our memory.

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Thanks so much for reading! Do you struggle with nostalgia? What are some ways you cope with it? If you liked this post, please consider ‘liking’ it, restacking, and leaving a comment, if you so wish.

To see what I get up to when I’m not writing, you can follow me on Instagram at mjewrites.