Haunting

Nostalgia. SUCH AN INTENSE sensation. Haunting-the only word that seems to come close to fitting how nostalgia affects me. It's just an excruciating echo of what used to be-good or bad. Pictures do the trick-the trick of bringing into the scope of recollection in my mind the things that I try not to dwell on for too long, for fear that I cannot handle it. I can honestly say that I miss the way that a lot of things used to be. I miss is not even enough. It will never be enough. You can only express what words can express and just accept that fact that there is no possible way to communicate the depth of what you feel. And yes, it is always the times you miss most that were the times you didn't even realize were the best times at the moment they were happening. When they were actually happening, you didn't think.....I'm gonna look back on this when things have changed and see this as one of the best times of my life. No. You just lived in the moment-right then, right there. You simply enjoyed your time and loved life.

It is possible to love life and not even realize it-not even know that you are so decadently enjoying yourself and the selves of those around you. Why is this? Maybe it is because we weren't trying. We just were. We just were living, being, doing. We weren't trying to get something, we weren't wanting something, we weren't wishing for something, for someone. We were just soaking the moment we were in. And that was enough for us. Could that possibly still be enough for us even now? Even after time has passed and things have changed? Maybe a new level of enjoyment-we have no choice in that matter. We can want to "go back to the way things were, the way they used to be" but if we really get real with ourselves, that's never going to happen. This is a new time, a new us. We adapt, we change-as do our surroundings. Maybe saying all of this is more of a remedial attempt to try and convince my own self of what I don't want to accept but know is true. And of course, it is always at night when the nostalgia is the most caustic. When ANY emotion and feeling is at the height of potency. With the aid of music thrown into this mix, things can get pretty sentimental and wistful. Nostalgia by definition (big fan of the definitions) means "longingly remembering". Longingly being the key word-as if remembering sometimes isn't torturous enough, longingly adds to the anguish of it.

Sometimes you yearn for something so furiously that you can taste it. You can smell it. And you just know, that if you ache for it madly enough, you can have it again. You convince yourself in your mind that it is possible to attain that time, that place again because how can you not when you want something so voraciously? Alas, the acute and utterly cruel truth roundhouse kicks your face when you drop back to the ground, back to reality. Usually when you wake up after falling asleep in your intoxicatingly nostalgic stupor. Morning has its way-it has a way of smearing your face with the raw truth as the light of day bleeds into every crack and crevice of your residence and your mind. All you have left at that point is a bad aftertaste of your past that is irrevocably trapped inside of your cranium and the unmitigated dread of the next night to come when it will all come rushing back again.