Since I was a child, I have had a propensity for nostalgia. I\u2019m not sure where it came from or how I got my head around it with so little experience behind me, but there it is. Perhaps I learned it from my mother, who has had much in her life to long for; perhaps it came to me through the blood of my Slavic ancestors, who have made an art of wistful (and occasionally bitter) remembrance and living in the past \u2013 I don\u2019t know. What I do know is that even when I was 14 years old, in the first romantic relationship of my life, I instinctively looked forward and anticipated looking back on it when it was all over. I found a way to be nostalgic for something I hadn\u2019t even lost yet. It was a self-indulgent practice, but one that fed my writing. It\u2019s also one that I\u2019ve struggled to eliminate (with some success) over the years.<\/p>\n
Autumn is the best season for nostalgia. In the waning of the year, it seems natural to take stock of what you\u2019ve had and seen and heard and loved, and it\u2019s only natural to remember something missing and mourn its absence. This morning, the sky as I drove to the office was a fall sky, the first of the year: sunshine and blue juxtaposed against gray thunderheads; the lake ruffled by a not-quite-wind that\u2019s still more than a breeze. I was listening to New Order<\/a>, which has been in my head since I watched 24 Hour Party People<\/a> (highly recommended!) last night, and at one point, rounding a corner in Evanston, the sun on the water, just at the beginning of True Faith<\/a>, I felt a stab of something that was almost like pain, but not quite. It was a familiar feeling, one I knew from long ago. It occurred to me half a second later that it was a bolt of pure nostalgia, rife with angst and drama, hearkening all the way back to those high school years when I\u2019d torment myself with thoughts of how things would be when they weren\u2019t so good anymore. I\u2019ve missed things since then, lord knows I\u2019ve had my heart broken more than once, but I don\u2019t know if I\u2019ve had a moment this pristine. I can\u2019t blame Bernard & the gang for it, really, although it\u2019s true that they were my favorites back in \u201886<\/a>. It\u2019s me that brought this up, it\u2019s me that\u2019s feeling it. So what\u2019s going on? It\u2019s been a rough month, but so? I\u2019ve had rough months. But here\u2019s the thing: I really am longing for a time when things were simpler, or at least seemed to be. I feel so old saying that, and so dramatic and so immature all at the same time. But I can\u2019t find better words for this feeling. I have been scarred by a recent encounter with a virtual stranger \u2013 in particular, my trust has been broken, and it\u2019s spilling out of that encounter and into the rest of my life. I won\u2019t get into all the details here, but I allowed myself to be lured in and now I\u2019m paying for it. I actually caught myself last night distrusting a good friend because of this experience. How quickly, I thought then and am still thinking now – how easily I can be broken, after all. Is it just this one experience I\u2019m feeling the brunt of, or the weight of a collection? I never thought I was one to hold a grudge, but am I? <\/p>\n It\u2019s a disturbing thought, that I might be changing in this particular way. I\u2019m interested to see what will happen \u2013 can I shrug off the shroud that this past month has thrown over me? How quickly can I go back to being myself, even if myself is too open an idiot for her own good? I don\u2019t want to distrust people, even though I\u2019m often told it\u2019s an exercise I should learn. Constantly asking myself if someone\u2019s trying to deceive me strikes me as much the same kind of exercise in futility as the preemptive nostalgia of my younger days. And this year, I\u2019d rather spend my free time playing in the leaves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Since I was a child, I have had a propensity for nostalgia. I\u2019m not sure where it came from or…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/custom-deluxe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/custom-deluxe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/custom-deluxe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/custom-deluxe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/custom-deluxe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/custom-deluxe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/custom-deluxe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/custom-deluxe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/custom-deluxe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}