Day 21 - Nostalgia
I woke up in the morning yesterday to an immediate nostalgic feeling after a tumultuous storm overnight. The light was dim regardless of the fact the sun had already been risen for a couple of hours and there was a misty, humid feeling in the air that only spring in the Midwest can emit. It was the exact feeling I had when I first began my job last year.
But ironically, I hadn't felt one sense of nostalgia for my year last year since moving into my new house. I think it just has to do with the fact that I was miserable living in a dingy apartment, working often while still taking fulltime college courses, and somehow trying to navigate the relationships with my family that were so often a rollercoaster of up and down emotions. But it felt so refreshing and beautiful to feel a sense of nostalgia for that time because it can allow me the understanding that it was not all so bad.
During this time, I overcame so many odds of getting a great job that I wanted so badly while still working another and living my downwards lifestyle. Everything surrounding me was embedded in low vibrations, but I still fought to overcome it! And no wonder, then, for that reason, I can have that sense of nostalgia for that time. I had early mornings and dreary drives to work with wet hair, nice clothing and anxiety about what was to come. But through everything, still the feeling of this is new and I'm so proud of getting to this point. That's the nostalgic feeling, pride and new beginnings.
It's the nostalgia of long, mentally tiring days and driving home through the college campus with gunshots to my left. Walking through the loud, slamming front door, down the drab stairs, to my wooden entryway to my sect. Through that doorway, through the living room to my true sect, through that door to change my clothes and immediately sift through the bedsheets to find my TV remote and immerse my world with a sense of something else. Shuffling to the semi-dark kitchen to boil water and start making dinner as my show loads onscreen.
Sitting in my room with an almost overflowing bowl of steaming mac n cheese and a glass of old milk watching the next episode of White Lotus and then the next episode and then the next, before realizing I should go to bed soon, hence a call to J across the river. A phone call that would most likely be cut short and as the basement apartment bedroom fills suddenly with the same, familiar silence, I look back to the TV after a moment of drifting and press resume.
This time was emersed with the sense of hope that it might all end soon and I could quit my dreary lifestyle as soon as I could reside in a better place. It was truly my saving grace, I was desperate for anything else. I can remember just telling J that even as long as we can be searching for an apartment (not thinking we would be so lucky as to find a house) by my birthday, I'd be satisfied. We went apartment hunting in that same dreary, humid spring weather.
I have begun to think of tulips (as well as paint them), remember bright green grass, and that spring may be one of the most renewing times of the year.
Coincidentally enough, I came home from work yesterday with the same sense of feeling and walked through my new white door to the familiar scent of mac n cheese. It reminds me that everything does end but is also always brought back in some new way.