Nostalgia: The World's Most Prevalent Mental Illness

Nostalgia is a sickening, disgusting, soul-crushing experience that I would never wish on any human worthy of happiness -- yet it is something that seems hardwired into us the same way that trauma might be, or excitement. It is comforting, yet sinister, a reminder of our finite experience on this planet. It is intertwined with the five senses so beautifully, but so abruptly. The smell of the first Bath & Body Works fragrance your mom ever bought for you transports you to your mind's clips and scenes of your eighth grade math classroom, just before everything got weird, before you spent weeks inside. The melody to that old song that played on the car radio gets stuck in your head, until you remember the summer you spent camping with a little boombox sitting on a stump playing the 2010s pop radio station. You get tense when you see someone walking down the street wearing the same outfit your ex-boyfriend wore five years ago, or feel a warmth in your heart eating mom’s home-cooked meals that you haven't had in a while. Maybe when someone hugs you just like your grandma did, you feel a bit of emptiness accompanying the warm embrace.

Our memory is a complicated, messy, horrid place, sometimes. Yet somehow, my worst fear is losing it all, the way my grandfather is. Every time I see him struggle to recall something that would’ve never slipped his mind before, my brain plays the scenes of my strongest male figure, just ten years ago, hunting with me, laughing with me. The worst nostalgia of all is the reminiscence of those no longer with us, like my moments with my grandmother. I never thought that nostalgia could impact somebody so deeply when the recollections are just a few years old. I am young, but my brain is full; so full that I almost wish I couldn’t remember anything at all. The feeling of nostalgia does not discriminate. You remember the good times, and the bad times, like when you couldn’t get off the couch for a month, and you sunk almost as deep into the cushions as you did into your depression. And for some really messed up, guilt-inducing, stressful reason, you feel a warm and fuzzy feeling remembering it. And then it turns into the hot, burning feeling in your stomach like you’re about to cry or you’re about to puke.

Nostalgia is a mental illness, to me. It is all consuming in the moment, and it alters the state of your brain. All of a sudden all of the progress you have made in your life is worth nothing at all, and you’re nauseated by the knowledge that you will never relive your life’s moments, and all you have left is that pit inside of you. I am nineteen years old now, but in my memory, I am three years old and playing with the dollhouse my mom probably got on sale. I am five years old, on the couch wrapped in a Dora the Explorer blanket, pretending to be asleep so mom will carry me to bed. I am seven, exploring the internet, and calling my friends on the landline telephone to see if they will play games with me. Ten years old, and learning that I have a brain that works differently than others, develops faster, maybe, and spending time with people much too old for me to fill the gaps between my peers and I. Thirteen, and suddenly surrounded by hundreds of people I had never seen before in my life; bullied, and a bully, probably. Scared, but laughing all the time. Sixteen and struggling.

If you asked me to sit down and recount all of my life’s core memories I would talk for hours, maybe days, because nostalgia takes up almost every second of my mind’s wandering moments. It’s stupid to me, because I am the same girl that can’t remember what I learned in class last week, or what I had for dinner last night, or really anything of significance in my life, at the moment. If I was consumed by school the same way I am by existential dread then maybe I wouldn’t be so stuck in the past that I can't work on my future. That in itself is an illness - the inability to prioritize life-changing tasks due to a gut-wrenching need to walk through my past once more. The cure? Probably forgetting everything, amnesia. Until I suffer a massive head injury, I’ll be here, thinking, remembering, writing about it.