A funny thing happens when you get older: you can’t stop looking back.

At least, that’s how it feels to me, but perhaps it’s just who I am. I have always been thinking of some time other than the one I am in, but now I’m more aware of behaviours than I ever have been, and I can see that nostaliga is never too far away.

And Taylor Swift is right – it’s a mind’s trick.

It Was Freezing In The Palace

It doesn’t matter how far I get, there’s always part of me that thinks ‘yeah but…’

Perhaps it’s just part of being a precocious child. I was that classic introverted, book-loving teacher’s pet who spent a lot of time in her mind, even though I was lucky enough to be surrounded by good people a lot of the time, so being lost in memories or stories is just second nature to me at this point. But perhaps it is to do with my age, the dwindling days of my twenties and how things haven’t felt quite right since Covid.

Whatever the reason, nostalgia is a constant in my life. And the thing with nostaliga is it works on everything.

Even those times I was so unhappy, unsafe and generally unpleasant can become something precious in my mind thanks to the trickery of nostaliga. I know how I felt then and I know how lucky I am now, yet the longing still persists.

It interrupts everything I do and takes over my day. I can’t work or walk or write because my mind is no longer here. It’s in the past, a time when I was younger, but also less fortunate and less at peace then I catch myself being these days. Yet with the distance, it doesn’t look so bad.

Way Up There, I Actually Love It

Anything can trigger it; an old song, a smell, even the way the sunlight hits the windows on a good day. Sometimes I don’t need an external trigger, I’ll just find a memory trickling into the front of my mind, making me paralysed for a moment or two.

On the days nostaliga is particularly bad, I can’t get out of the mindset that I’m missing something central to who I am. The Fear Of Missing Out has been a big part of my life for so long, and now it’s effecting my relatioship to myself?!

My whole life I’ve wished to be where I am now. Of course, I didn’t have the specifics but the general idea of my life – the living with my partner, the writing job and even the dog, they’re all I’ve ever wanted. But there are days when I get stuck in the past, and while I don’t necessarily want to go back there, a craving for simpler, easier times influences the way I feel about who I used to be.

Perhaps nostalgia is a way of reconnecting to your younger self; the dreamer that put the work in to get you as far as you are now. Or perhaps is more nefarious, wanting you to doubt everything and feel unsettled, the way we’ve become accustomed too.

Whatever it is, nostalgia takes me by surprise some days and it can feel I’m drowning in the memories of who I used to be.

But I will never be the Rachael I used to be. I can never have that time back, for better or worse. I only have right now, and I need to accept that,

Without the girl of my past, those daft mistakes, growing, improvements, and dreams she had, I wouldn’t be here today. That shouldn’t be something to mourn, but celebrate; appreciate. I am doing what humans are supposed to do; growing, evolving. Moving on.

Past me did her job, and I should thank her. But not at the expense of myself now.

I know one day I’ll be wishing I was back here, where I am right now, thinking how young I was and how much I missed about myself, about the world, at this very moment. Ah the perils of being in your twenties, of witnessing yourself growing and being so aware of it all the time!

Nostalgia is a mind’s trick, if I’d been there, I’d hate it

• Taylor Swift, I Hate It Here (TTPD)

Speak soon,

Rachael

Image: Charles Robinson, Illustrations for The Secret Garden: “And the secret garden bloomed and bloomed and every morning revealed new miracles.”