"The pain from an old wound"

[breakinglight11]

Nostalgia seems to be a big thing lately, at least if society perceives you to be a nerd. The media lately is all about making money by reviving so-called “nostalgia properties,” making rebooted versions of things you supposedly will see now because you liked them as a kid.

Generally I’m not really that susceptible to nostalgia. Not because I’m any more sophisticated than anyone else, but because of how my memory works. As in, my memory kind of DOESN’T work, at least not in that particular way. I retain very few experiential memories of anything longer than a few months ago. Sure, I more or less remember what happened in my life, but only as facts, or at best as narratives— I have the story, in words, of what happened to me. Of sense memories, of what it felt like to actually be present in those memories, such as images in my head or sensations or sounds or smells, I have practically none. And correspondingly, with that level of remove from my own memories, I have very few emotional connections to those experiences. At least, not the kind of emotional connections that nostalgia plays on.

I tend not to hold onto my past because of this, which is a two-edged sword. The upside is I move on from difficult times pretty quickly and easily. I don’t have many emotional scars. Old shames, embarrassments, disappointments, and pains just kind of fade. But the downside is most of the positive feelings of my past don’t really endure either. They don’t make much in the way of lasting marks. I have a few, of course, but not many. My mother is the most major one. I hope to God I never forget the experience of my mother. I still have what it was like to look at her and be around her and how she loved me and the sound of her voice.

But recently a weird nostalgic feeling has crept over me a lot, for some things that once meant the whole world to me but in recent years I haven’t thought much of. And I’m not exactly sure why. Moreover, it’s been making me very sad to think of, and I don’t know why. I might talk more about this later. But it reminds me of when Don Draper explained on Mad Men that the word nostalgia comes from the Greek, meaning “the pain from an old wound.” I guess this was an old wound to me. But you’d think having moved on from it would mean it wouldn’t hurt anymore. I guess I’d figured it healed.