On Nostalgia

The funny thing about feeling you're on the outside is how much you long to be back there.

Although we moved out of the house I grew up in when I was 16, most of my dreams took place there for at least a decade afterwards. We'd be in the kitchen, or the big garden that hugged the back and side of the house, an adventure ground of flower beds, curved walkways, the little pond, and the lawn where we'd play football around mum's daffodils.

Still now, nearly another decade later, my dreams are very often populated by my two brothers and my sister, and sometimes my parents, even though I've lived in another country to all of them for a good while . My unconscious is clearly very busy with them. There, we're still a little crew, negotiating often-tricky situations together.

In my waking life, thinking back to the years together in that house is one of the surest routes to a wave of nostalgia so heavy it atually hurts. If i let mysef give in to it, my chest gets sucked down to the pit of my stomach, a crushing feeling of something being ripped away. My throat closes in, and the energy saps out of me. I wish I could go back to being our little unit, the four gang members held together by the attention of our parents.

The thing is, though, when I see them today, I don't know how to be. I frequently become silent and awkward, stiffening up when asked a question, answering monosyllabically with an air of annoyance. I'm somehow unable to open up, caught in an illogical bind of being convinced they don't really care, while at the same time uncomfortable that they're so interested, as if opening up would be too risky, too vulnerable. I don't want to play that board-game, I don't want any wine thanks, I don't mind what we eat, there's nothing in particular I want to do, except maybe go for a run by myself. I seem to try to negate any needs I might have, to negate my presence. Don't worry, I'll be gone soon.

It takes me a while to relax into beng with them, if i get there at all.

Nostalgia is surely directly proportional to how much you can manage to let yourself in to the fullness of the present moment, and to connect with the people and things around you. I'm not so good at being close to the people around me.

Even as a kid, where the longing directs itself, I spent large amounts of time searching out spaces of my own, hiding in the attic with intricate jigsaw puzzles and my dad's anatomy books, reading alone in the room at the end of the house curled up in a ball in an armchair, or suddenly wandering off down the garden in the middle of a game of football or cricket with my brothers. I kept on trying to be separate. And yet the thought of the childhood years brings on its first taste the warm glow of being a close crew.

The idea of being really connected is wonderful when I locate it in the past, but in the present tense it makes me nervous. Whenever I leave my family after a visit, I invariably feel incredibly sad that I'm not with them, even though while there I spend a lot of time feeling on the outside, and hurt and annoyed that they're putting me there. I've done enough therapy to know that I put myself on the outside all by myself, and finally, finally, it might have got through to my scared little brain that I am not being rejected, and that they do actually want me there.

Sometimes feeling accepted is almost more painful than being on the outside. A fullness, a relief, an intensity I'm not used to. Nostalgia is so comfortable in comparison. A longing for connection, love, acceptance, whatever, without any of the dangers that could actually come from those things. I'll probably always need to retreat and be alone, but I'm trying to join in. I want to be part of it.