What have I done with this year? I've got a job, a car, an apartment, a roommate. All the tangibles are more or less in place. But at any given moment, I'm not really here.
In fact, I often think that I'd much rather be anywhere but here. Back in Japan, of course, or off on a new adventure in another country. But even the idea of returning to Abilene or Victoria sounds somewhat appealing -- somewhere familiar where there are people I know and love.
That's the one thing I'm really missing here: a community. I remember when I first moved to Japan -- in fact, you can probably scroll down and read my post about it for yourself -- the immense sense of loss I felt at having left behind my college friends. Back in Abilene I was part of a tight-knit community that formed around a common interest in social justice and a common inability to quite fit into the mainstream of our college's culture.
That group of people was a huge part of making me the person I am. Leaving them behind was wrenching, and at the time I wondered if I had made a terrible decision, abandoning something that had felt so right and good. Reading back over my post from November of 2010, reading about how my new friendships simply weren't as satisfying as the old ones had been -- it's comforting to know that person's future already. She didn't know it at the time, but those fragile new relationships she was so tentatively cultivating would become the fabric of a new community -- a new community she would come to cherish as dearly as the one she had just left.
What I wouldn't give to go back to November 2010 and be that me again, surrounded by those people and with all those experiences still ahead of me. And herein lies the problem with my present -- Nostalgia is the enemy of moving the f*** on with your life. (Nostalgia is the mindkiller. Nostalgia is the little death that brings total obliteration.)
This is how I find myself where I am now, as a person who would rather sit at home alone on her computer talking to people on other continents about their lives, than go out and make a life of her own. Because, frankly, those other lives are more real to me than my present reality. And because what lies just behind me is so much happiness that I can't imagine what comes next ever measuring up.
How does one escape a happy past? How does one kill nostalgia?
I will face my nostalgia. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past--
This video is the enemy.
4 comments:
Hmmm... Good thoughts.
Thank you!
I was talking to my mom last night about the exact same thing. My nostalgia turns on so quickly after the good times that it makes getting through the rough times 1000x more difficult. I've learned time and time again that each new place brings a new adventure that you eventually can't imagine life without...but sometimes you just want to pack up your bags and high tail it back to Nostalgialand and eat food from your favorite restaurants with your favorite people.
Yes. I wish my Nostalgialand was not literally another country.
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