These Old Feelings

I don’t know what brings about nostalgia, but I think I’ve been officially plagued. Maybe some strange “transitional period” in my life has contributed to my thoughts going backwards, but I’d prefer to think of it as striving to understand my current life by way of the past. Dwelling on the past tends to fall into the longing or idealizing categories, however my memories don’t seem to fit into either one. In fact they seem eerily close to the present, not ‘like yesterday’ more like right now at this moment. Standing over the toilet wishing for a penis at age six, contemplating suicide versus dying my hair orange at age 14, and applying for internships in New York City as a young adult, are all oddly similar. I do not mean to diminish the severity of self-destructive behavior, but I do think it’s useful, or at least honest, to establish some connection between what are seen as very separate experiences. Rifling through some old boxes, I discovered a treasure trove from my past at my parents’ house: dozens of letters and notes from my elementary and middle school classrooms exchanged among friends, collages of vandalized ‘90s icons, love letters from people I don’t remember, and hundreds of diary entries that seemed to access emotions I am no longer capable of. I have no idea what happened to most of the people who figure in these archives, and the idea of trying to find them through Facebook makes me ill. It is hard to believe that all of these artifacts came from my peers, children under the age of 15.