nostalgia is a mirrorball

the imperfect sparkly metaphor you didn't know you needed

AFTERTHOUGHTS: I chatted with friends after writing this and have three lovely morsels for you prior to reading today’s missive. First, Happy & Sad by Kacey Musgraves gorgeously encapsulates the feeling of nostalgia. (Thank you, Amanda.) And, second, there is (of course) a Swedish word that also gorgeously encapsulates the feeling of a specific nostalgia. It’s “vemod” which roughly translates to that tender sadness you feel when something good is going to end soon. (Thank you, Samantha.) Finally, there is a feeling of nostalgia for a present moment as you are living the moment—a lot of us emotional kids felt this a lot throughout our lives. If you are one, you are not alone. (Thank you, Angela.)

---

Call me a dog with a bone, but I need to talk nostalgia again. My five-month old puppy is laying at my feet, a literal dog with a bone—his long legs stretched out before him. These legs are much longer than they were three weeks ago. I’m beside myself with missing his puppy breath and ultra-awkward gait. I’m not sure how this happened. And, yet, of course it’s just another obvious and mundane reminder from time tick tick ticking away on us. He’s still awkward but it’s teenage lanky versus baby deer wobbly. Yes, I’m tearing up just thinking about it, as if I needed any more life reminders!

This puppy-morphing-into-dog phenomenon is my current, “in your face” example of nostalgia. The obvious nostalgia is the fun stuff—oh my god do you remember this Ashlee Simpson song? 2004 was such a good year. Or, holy shit when’s the last time you made a friendship bracelet?¹ And even, watching 10 Things I Hate About You for the first time in years and quoting every. single. word. because “I know you can be overwhelmed and you can be underwhelmed but can you ever just be whelmed?” I know you can in Europe.

aforementioned, nostalgia-producing, lanky baby deer legs

While the surface level nostalgia is an absolute romp of a time, it’s the nostalgia swimming in the depths that has a particular grip on me this year. The crescendo of this deeper nostalgia hit me by surprise while I was on a trip to my hometown earlier this month. Reunions are obvious nostalgia triggers, but my 20 year high school reunion felt especially poignant.

As I drove the 90 miles north from the Amarillo airport in my rental car, I welcomed the superficial nostalgia by blasting the top hits from early 2000s with delight.² I knew every single word to so many of these songs I hadn’t heard in years. Much to my surprise, two seconds into one particular song, tears inexplicably started rolling down my face. I shouldn’t have been surprised—on the third second of the song, a particular smile came to mind—a childhood friend who passed away in 2017. We were friends from the elementary school playground, to the high school basketball court, to college game days and late nights with our feet dangling in the pool of our apartment complex. We were girlhood friends turned young adult confidantes, so, duhhh, the tears flowed. Over My Head (Cable Car) was one of our favorite mainstream jams, and we would turn up the volume on The Fray’s nasally bray in the car and sing along with abandon. I rolled down the windows in my rental car for a few moments, just as we did in countless Gruver and Lubbock nights. She’s on your mind, The Fray and I croon knowingly.

The nostalgia of the place and the muscle memory of physically being there, so strong, was even more potent with the early autumn dusk painting the sky a gorgeous, ombré of chambray blue and ruddy orange. The Gruver “skyline” on the horizon brought to the surface my ongoing grief I hold for my friend, of course, but that was just the first instance of a dive into a deeper well of nostalgia to commune with the girl I used to be.

Every detail of my reunion weekend was potent with this nostalgia. Just the smell of my old high school gym caused a 20 minute monologue to my friends, reminiscing on the countless games played with friends, the questionable snacks we would eat pre-game, and the lasting legacy our teams left on the Lady Hound Basketball program. The high school library still had the stools I would sit on throughout my high school years and talk to our librarian about my teenage woes and dreams. This is where my my deep love of reading and books was cultivated. Walking the halls where Teenage Cassie dreamed, learned, and played, I was juxtaposing in real time all the many versions I’ve been over 20 years with that precocious, Well Actually version of me.

And I’m not being that dramatic here, or at least, not intentionally so. I may have been a little surprised about this rush of nostalgic emotion and wave of grief that accompanied it, but nostalgia is categorically a little theatrical. Right? I mean, even the definitions of nostalgia illustrate this:

Merriam-Webster:

1: a wistful or excessively sentimental yearning for return to or of some past period or irrecoverable condition

2: the state of being homesick : homesickness

Urban Dictionary:

A bittersweet longing for things, persons, or situations of the past.

my blurred attempt at catching the Texas panhandle sunset

Wistful yearning? Bittersweet longing?? Irrecoverable condition??? I want to laugh at the histrionic connotations embedded in these definitions, but well, actually, I stifle a giggle because, girl, I relate. On this particular visit to my hometown, grief wasn’t the only emotion that the nostalgia triggered. I was overcome with a bombastic feeling of homesickness…but for what? I don’t want to move back to my hometown—I can say this with certainty.

Yet, nostalgia and grief were telling my emotional center that I want to “move back” to a place where I have sleepovers with friends, giggling and gossiping until the wee hours at night, all cramped in the same bed, legs and arms splayed comfortably and haphazardly over each other. I want to have the time and energy to play harmless pranks on the guys because they were rude to us in Chemistry class. I want to inhabit that space where the seemingly infinite horizon gives me permission to dream as big as the vast sky blazing blue above me. Golly gee, Merriam-Webster, is this that wistfulness you speak of?

I wrote about the maiden-mother-crone archetype a few weeks ago when I was down bad crying on the peloton (again with the drama!). And, apparently, I’ve been stuck on this idea of nostalgia for a while:

…I’m at an age where, for the first time, the maiden-mother-crone archetypes are all kind of swimming together in my heart, soul, and brain—not really at odds with each other, per se, but the combo certainly creates a ripe emotional state for nostalgia.

The drama and tears of the hometown nostalgia paired with this ongoing grappling of the maiden-mother-crone archetype has given me the basis for my working metaphor: as we grow and evolve as individuals, our grief gets paired with our personal brand of nostalgia refracting and amplifying both feelings, creating an emotional mirrorball effect. The nostalgia of holding space for my maiden, mother, and crone is a brilliant proliferation of mirrors on a mirror ball, especially in situations like my reunion where all versions of me are so heightened. And, aren’t we all just a sparkling culmination of memories? And, those memories embedded in our DNA reflect and refract our true selves, or at least the many facets of our true selves. Nostalgia and grief both do that for me.

So, in a sense, the depth and quality of our growth is like a mirrorball with grief and nostalgia proliferating the mirrors and reflective qualities. Or, perhaps, grief is ubiquitous, growth is inevitable, both are painful, and nostalgia helps reflect and refract light onto the deepest despair. Or, maybe I’m simply transfixed by the imagery of a lone mirrorball centered in a dimly lit dance floor, slowly turning and turning and turning, casting sparkles of light across the room. Whatever the case, the metaphor isn’t perfect, but neither are we, and neither is a mirrorball.

a small town (my hometown) water tower doing the lord’s work (i.e., evoking the nostalgia)

1. Leaning into girlhood nostalgia is yet another reason why I love The Eras Tour so much.

2. I highly recommend going to Spotify or Apple Music and finding a playlist of YOUR teenage years.