How To Move On

N O S T A L G I A

I've only ever encountered the word nostalgia in the crisp pages of books I've read, and the occasional wordplay by adults who flit in and out of my life. I've met it in careful accidents, in slip-of-the-tongues, and in looking for it in the dictionary. It's not that it's a bad word, or some sort of taboo. It's quite the opposite, actually. It's a little, beautiful word that seems to evade the people I know. I don't think I've heard anyone mention it in a conversation, yet the novelty of it has drawn my curiosity to its definitions, over the years. And I constantly feel the need to use the word to describe the spontaneous spurs of emotion that creep under my skin as I sift through my memories.

I love that it doesn't have just one meaning. It's a myriad of things.

Taken from the nifty dictionary in my phone, nostalgia is "the pleasure and sadness that is caused by remembering something from the past, and wishing that you could experience it again". That's something you don't hear everyday.

So, nostalgia is a paradox. It's the uncanny juxtaposition of pleasure and sadness, and feeling them both at the same time. It's the dichotomy that stems from a desire to relive a lost memory.

Other definitions describe it as "the state of being homesick", and "a wistful and excessively sentimental yearning to return to or of some past period or irrecoverable condition". It's a fitting description, considering that the word comes from the Greek word nostos, which means to "return home", and New Latin algia.

Indeed, it's a complex emotion. But it's not so hard to feel; it isn't hard to find. I find it in the old photographs of my childhood, and in the yellowing pages of the albums my mother keeps. I find it in the pencil strokes of the sketches he gave me, before he left my life in gray. I find it in my headphones when the soundtrack to my loneliness plays. I find it in the home I once knew when I pass it by on Rajah Street, and the homes in people that have gone cold as the years flew by (hence its collocation to homesickness). And I see it in the mirror as I watch my youth leave my forlorn face, ever so gently as the night wears on.

It's when I wake up to the dim silence of dawn, and flashes of the boy I used to be beg my mind for attention. And I see that boy in the arms of his pseudo-lover, searching for any validation in the lover's tear-stricken eyes. They cry into the dark as I wander through the rising day, and I can't help but wish that the clocks bring me back to that moment. And the fire in my chest grows too big and bright, and burns through my whole body, as the memories consume me. In a matter of seconds, I am reduced to smoke and ashes.

I can't say that it's some sort of déjà vu. It's not just a reckoning of "I've been here before." It's so much more than that. Déjà vu is passive, but nostalgia is the intractable, uncontrollable longing for what was. It's easy to hide, but it's not easy to forget. It'll keep coming back until you quench your thirst for the past. But there will come a time when you become self-aware of it, and you grow tired of wanting. So you move on. Whatever that may mean.

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