addicted to nostalgia?!
lately i've been trying to figure out if i have an addiction to nostalgia or if my fate is simply to live with the past consistently in my present. sounds strange? well its really not.
let's start at the beginning (why? because its a very nice place to start). i remember being 19 and moving to another city on my own with the intention of starting "afresh" (whatever that means - as i am slowly figuring out - is a complete falsity - you can never start new - because your old you is always just around the corner...) soon...i had friends from my old life in my new one and basically it was good (or at least the illusion of good) i met new people and the old and new most often meshed. but i kept being drawn home (yes that illusion of a place of comfort and recognition). from that time onward i was an elastic band - going back and forthe between a world i knew and a world that i didn't. finally, i realized that life would be a mix of the two for me - people from my past and people from my new emerging future. i liked it - it felt comfortable but new at the same time. life was good.
then i decided to move - back to the place i had come from. why? well it seemed that things were pointing me in that direction and it felt like i had come far enough to make new out of the old. confused yet? well me too. maybe bolding will help.
back in my old city, i found a new place to live and i felt the comforted reassurance of the old and the new merging together again. but then i realized my ex-boyfriend lived in my new building! i tried to ignore it - deny the very "uncomfortable" realitity that the old and the new dont ALWAYS end up in a comfortable mix. and for awhile denial was a great thing. in fact, i find myself able to deny quite a lot in this new/old world that i am in. but then, my ex started to yell my name from the balcony...and my new world seemed even more distant to me. it seemed like very time a turned a corner the past was there to haunt me; in the gorcery store, around a street corner, walking up to my apartment, and most prominently screaming from my balcony. then, the past got even closer...
bumping into an ex is never a good experience as much as we try to rationalize it as such. but bumping into certain ex's is something worse than others. for 10 years this ex has been on my present mind quite frequently...again denial is a wonderful place to be. as i struggled to see and find my future in the present by ex was always ever present (probably more the way my ex reminded me of who i had been in the past). then i bumped into him and found out he was married. and i realized that while i had been living in the past he was firmly engrained in his own future. i woke up from a long and tenuous delusion - i had been living in the past (in more ways that one) more so than i had realized - this mixing of the past into a present with the old and new was a delusion - a hallucination of sorts - shall i say a dissociation?
needlessto say this has not been a plesent realization and i have been trying to find ways to bring this thought process into the blog catharsis world i have created...and i dont really know if its been that successful. the main theme of this process of past disentanglement is figuring out if i have, in fact, an addiction to the past or if fate simply seems to consistently bring me back there. perhaps i will never know.
does the past ever go away? arn't we all just products of where we have been? can we ever forget and brush off the memories we have and the people who know where we've been? do we really need to? is that healthy? is it inevitable that our pasts get carried to our presents and into our futures?
i find solice in that i will never need a time-machine.
let's start at the beginning (why? because its a very nice place to start). i remember being 19 and moving to another city on my own with the intention of starting "afresh" (whatever that means - as i am slowly figuring out - is a complete falsity - you can never start new - because your old you is always just around the corner...) soon...i had friends from my old life in my new one and basically it was good (or at least the illusion of good) i met new people and the old and new most often meshed. but i kept being drawn home (yes that illusion of a place of comfort and recognition). from that time onward i was an elastic band - going back and forthe between a world i knew and a world that i didn't. finally, i realized that life would be a mix of the two for me - people from my past and people from my new emerging future. i liked it - it felt comfortable but new at the same time. life was good.
then i decided to move - back to the place i had come from. why? well it seemed that things were pointing me in that direction and it felt like i had come far enough to make new out of the old. confused yet? well me too. maybe bolding will help.
back in my old city, i found a new place to live and i felt the comforted reassurance of the old and the new merging together again. but then i realized my ex-boyfriend lived in my new building! i tried to ignore it - deny the very "uncomfortable" realitity that the old and the new dont ALWAYS end up in a comfortable mix. and for awhile denial was a great thing. in fact, i find myself able to deny quite a lot in this new/old world that i am in. but then, my ex started to yell my name from the balcony...and my new world seemed even more distant to me. it seemed like very time a turned a corner the past was there to haunt me; in the gorcery store, around a street corner, walking up to my apartment, and most prominently screaming from my balcony. then, the past got even closer...
bumping into an ex is never a good experience as much as we try to rationalize it as such. but bumping into certain ex's is something worse than others. for 10 years this ex has been on my present mind quite frequently...again denial is a wonderful place to be. as i struggled to see and find my future in the present by ex was always ever present (probably more the way my ex reminded me of who i had been in the past). then i bumped into him and found out he was married. and i realized that while i had been living in the past he was firmly engrained in his own future. i woke up from a long and tenuous delusion - i had been living in the past (in more ways that one) more so than i had realized - this mixing of the past into a present with the old and new was a delusion - a hallucination of sorts - shall i say a dissociation?
needlessto say this has not been a plesent realization and i have been trying to find ways to bring this thought process into the blog catharsis world i have created...and i dont really know if its been that successful. the main theme of this process of past disentanglement is figuring out if i have, in fact, an addiction to the past or if fate simply seems to consistently bring me back there. perhaps i will never know.
does the past ever go away? arn't we all just products of where we have been? can we ever forget and brush off the memories we have and the people who know where we've been? do we really need to? is that healthy? is it inevitable that our pasts get carried to our presents and into our futures?
i find solice in that i will never need a time-machine.
posted by blogging it out at 12:33 PM
1 Comments:
Wow! Can I just say that that was an AWESOME blog! Too wiped to comment right now... we'll talk.
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