nostalgia- it's everwhere

jgarc381
2 days ago
5 min read

Hello beautiful people! I hope everyone had a good Halloween weekend and is not hungover anymore!

I am thinking about nostalgia a lot recently, therefore this blog will be about nostalgia.

Nostalgia- A sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past, typically for a period of time or place with happy personal associations.

In other words, a feeling of missing a former time, place, or person, it can be happy and comforting or sad. It can be triggered by old songs, smells, and memories.

Nostalgia follows me everywhere I go, and sometimes I don’t even realize it’s nostalgia. It’s present in myself, when I look in the mirror, I see the same eyes that smiled in a picture with my dog in 2010, I was so little then, my main worries were catching the new episodes of iCarly and playing with my Barbies. I miss that time, I miss that house, I miss all my toys, I miss my dog.

I walk into my apartment, and I am instantly hit by a smell that takes me years back. Isn't it crazy how just something as simple as a smell can bring us somewhere we haven't been in years? I am hit with the smell of my aunt, not just my aunt, but how her house would smell. I used to be indifferent towards it, but now I wish I had a candle with the smell, or a perfume, I would do anything to be able to smell her and her evidence of living again. She’s sick now, I can still smell her, but she doesn’t smell like herself anymore, she doesn’t smell like anything really, now it’s just the faint smell of whatever they use to wash linens at the nursing home. Here I am on a Wednesday at 4pm feeling very weird because I don’t know how to feel, should I feel comfort that I can smell her somewhere she’s never been? I don’t know I am kind of angry that I can’t smell her anymore, and sad. I am sad now, I long for the moments we had that live in my memories. Why does my apartment smell the exact same as she would?

My grandpa plays old Spanish music in the car. Some songs remind me of when I was a kid. When we would celebrate Christmas and New Year's at their house. I love when my grandpa plays music, I love when he plays music in the car, and I am in the back seat. I feel like a kid again.

I am in the thrift store with my brothers and sister in law, and I find an old lamp I used to have in my room when I was a kid. I bought it, of course. Aren’t I still a kid? I don’t think so, I am 21 years old. I still feel 10 some days, and 13, and 17, wait, aren’t I still 17? I wanted to be big and grown up so bad when I was little, as every child does, I wish I could be playing in the playground waiting for my parents to pick me up from school now.

I search on eBay sometimes for an old bed for my small Barbie house I still have. I find it, and I have to tell myself I will buy it later. I want it, it reminds me of all the times I would play.

Maybe I like making wishlists so much because it reminds me of circling all the things I wanted for my birthday and Christmas in the American Girl doll catalogs.

My house smells like my house. Nowhere else smells like it, I know, once I unlock the door and step inside with all my millions of bags hanging off my shoulders, holding stress from the week that I am home.

My grandparents' house has always smelled like my grandparents' house. I don’t know what it is, but no matter how many times they move their space, it always smells the same. Maybe it’s them and not their house. I wish I could put it in a bottle and smell it when I miss them. When I come back to Chicago after visiting them, all my clothes and things smell like them. I wear them till I can no longer smell them.

As I am walking home from class, I see my old apartment. I feel sad, but relieved. I didn't like it there, but I miss it there. I have memories I will remember forever there. I feel sad again. I see my old room, I have had so many rooms in my life, about 9. I miss all of them. They all hold a part of me. I hope whoever is in there now takes care of it.

I go down the barbie aisle in target because it makes me happy, I still feel the same excitement I used to feel. And I still want every single one, even though I no longer play with them.

The smell of the Hispanic grocery store I used to go to after school with my Godmother, the smell of the warm churros at the checkout line. I would always get the strawberry one. I miss after-school activities.

The smell of chlorine indoors reminds me of when I would take swimming lessons when I was in high school. I didn't really like it at the time. I like it now. I remember liking the drive home, showering, and getting cozy for bed.

I collect little miniature things now, and I make mini spaces for them. I take care of them like my Barbies. I still play all the time. I play when I make my crafts, I play when I decorate my room, and I play when I make toy spaces for my little brother.

Sometimes I feel nostalgic for times months ago. Maybe it’s because I know I will never be a senior in college again. I will never be apartment shopping with my roommate for our last year of college again. I am nostalgic for everything now, I cant let any moment get lost in my mind. I need to be able to re visit these times. I will remember everything.

Nostalgic things:

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