Nostalgia…

The past few days, maybe a week, have been so nostalgic for me. I wish I knew why, but my brain has been stuck on repeat somewhere between the years of 2000 and 2005. The memories come rushing over me, flooding back in such vivid color that I feel like I am right there again.

I just turned 17, on top of the world. Met a boy who took my breath away.  We sat in auditorium, girls dressed in white caps and gowns on the left, boys dressed in maroon on the right. He was directly across the isle from me. (I knew it was a good idea to find someone to love with a similar last name.) My eyes never left him. I cant tell you who spoke, I cant tell you what they talked about, but I can tell you how intently he hung on their every word as I smiled. Maybe I should ask him one day if anything important was said.  As soon as the caps flew, my body flew over into the sea of maroon. I was that one lone white gown in the arms of a boy in a sea of maroon. There is a picture somewhere of that. Maybe our yearbook. I treasured that picture with all I had. That picture was so clearly US, and how we were. It didn’t matter what happened around us. It was just me and him. In a sea.

Boy, we were crazy. A few months later we moved into our own apartment. Covered a hand-me-down HORRIBLE couch in purple velvet and became (what we thought were) adults. That apartment was our solitude.

Those memories just don’t stop.

There isn’t anything I want  from that time. There isn’t anything I hope to re-learn. There isn’t anything I want to do over. There isn’t anything I miss. I am content with the memories. Content with outcome. But I cant stop reliving them.

Maybe that period in my life mirrors the stage of life I am in right now. The exploration, the excitement the learning and growing. Maybe.

I would be lying if I didn’t say that some of these moments do come with “what-if’s” but they don’t last long. More often than not they end in “thank goodness.”

Each stop light bring a different moment, different memory.

I’m grateful for those memories. For the good times, and even the not so good times.

Grateful for the nostalgic moments, and the smiles that result from them.

Sometimes I can get lost in words. Last night I blog hopped. (my favorite hobby, but one I tend to leave off of my resume)
I got lost for an embarrassingly amount of time in words. Words that spoke to my soul. Words that resonated so many thoughts and feelings and of the past and kinda the present.

I was (even) surprised how grateful I was for someone else saying the words I didn’t want to. Reliving those moments that I didn’t want to. I just wanted to remember that moment in that boys arms on the day we graduated. Someone else can remember the heartbreak and devastation 6 years later.

I suddenly became nostalgic for the writer. Sympathy nostalgia or something, maybe. I kept digging further back. Looking for the begging of the ending I had just finished reading.

I thanked the writer. They probably don’t get thanks very often for doing something that comes so naturally. But my nostalgic heart needed that last night. (Or maybe this morning.. it was embarrassing.)

It doesn’t really mater if they are mine, or someone elses, I’m craving nostalgia.