Nostalgia

Be careful with nostalgia, it isn't what it used to be. It twists and turns and chokes, and sometimes in the right moments, it even makes you cry.

I do remember when the years passed gently, when we were full and sleepless, loud and pounding. I remember when I was still young enough to trust the world and old enough to know that I shouldn't, but human enough to do it anyway, and I remember what it's like to be left fractured and changed. I remember being hemmed and halved, loosely bound to things you know will never last and the other half chasing after the infinite you know you'll never have.

I am seventeen and eighteen and nineteen and twenty. I am that fourteen year old girl crying in my mother's closet because I felt the weight of the entire world on my shoulders and didn't have the voice or the words to explain how lonely it is when no one understands and you're constantly looking for a feeling that's never far but always fleeting, that's too complex to try to explain to anyone else so you keep it in soft-spoken places where no one ever looks. I am fifteen and looking out over the edge of what felt like the entire universe. I am sixteen and realising that nothing will ever be the same. And I know what it's like to have the people in our lives leave blind spots on who we used to be. But I also know that this cramped and crooked place is the only thing that can knock the wind out of you, that can keep us alive.