I woke up on Tuesday and missed my best friend. I do not need a reason. It just happens as we age. Maybe it is living on a different side of the continent than my oldest friends. Maybe its spending the day on the phone with them uninhibited, chatting through all the good, bad, coherent, crazy, and old. Or contrary wise, it could just be old MTV, a good cab, and hearing a 2000s song at the right moment.
Whatever the rationale being searched for; Nostalgia hit today.
There’s a moment in life when you realize you are who you made yourself. While that is freeing, we must see the many people who contribute to who you became. I call this the family we chose.
These are the people who saw me dancing on a bar. Cry over the “someone who never deserved it.” Helped me crash a jet ski at 3am. Broke my crayons in kindergarten. Hid in the woods at some raging party no one can remember. Sat on the bathroom floor to discuss life. They are the people that made me.
When you enter a realm with no one as your safety blanket, you become a version of yourself that holds these people. One must begin to function in a way where they are part of you, but never physically with you.
I am lucky if I see one of my best friends once a year.
Granted, I am elusive in my own way. I love to travel but I hate to travel home. It’s like that Demi Moore moment in ‘Now & Then,’ where she talks about never going home again, Thomas Wolfe had it right. Home is not a destination; it is the people that make the city.
While I may be Hemingway to their Fitzgerald, they are always a part of who I continue to grow through.
As time rages forward, you remember the small moments. When you were able to whisper across a desk how ridiculous that conversation was. Crawl home at 4am because you just could not leave. Leave in the middle of the night on vacation just because you can. You never imagine the distance from point A to point B, and how quickly that begins to show on your face.
At this point in life, I am beginning to understand how nostalgia keeps us alive.
I used to view the concept as something ominous. Like it would sneak up on me and tell me I was old. Everything exciting is behind you and you will not feel that level of life again. I feared nostalgia as if it were death.
Now I understand nostalgia is there to remind you, you lived. You are alive.
While we may not live in the same places, see the same people, we have many timelines to live. That is a level of luck some of those on our journeys did not receive. We must honor nostalgia for ourselves, and them.