Nostalgia

Is it odd to find yourself in a different place in a different time, to find yourself hurtling into the past but maintaining your sense of self. I had a weird moment, it's ongoing, I'm sitting with my headphones in, music blaring, and I feel like I'm sitting in my bedroom back in 2006 when I was 16, but I know everything I know now, I'm just there... I know every word, I know every beat, I feel the thick air of my dusty bedroom around me, I just close my eyes and I'm there... There are posters on the ceiling of boys I fancy from bands I adore, there is an old flag for my home town's football team hanging behind me, price stickers from every DVD or CD I had bought with the money I earned at my weekend job adorn the dressing table by my bed, everything is a mess; I still have cuddly toys on my bed, every surface in my room is stacked with things I've either stolen or hoarded or DVDs or books or clothes, even the floor... I'm not wearing make up, I'm not dressed up, my hair is cropped shorter with layers, I'm not trying to be anything, I'm a blank canvas. But I open my eyes and I'm twenty two, I wear make up as a mask, I layer on eye-liner to make myself look different, because different is better than ordinary, I have rent to pay, bills, washing to sort out, a life to plan, a future to hurtle towards, I have battle wounds, I have regrets...

But hearing this music, I am that carefree idiot, I'm that person who was so uncertain of herself she didn't stop to ask who she was, she just kept chugging along happy without answers, happy to be a combination of qualities she figured other people wanted her to be, a blank page, an empty head. My crowning achievement; knowing every word to every song on these albums. See the dirty little secret was that before the shit hit the fan I was so boring, nothing happened to me until after I turned 17, before that I had nothing to define myself.; it was before life got hard, before things took a turn, before I started regretting things. God. Does it hurt that the lyrics now make more sense to me than they did before? Is it weird that this music probably means more now? Yeah it's weird... If you could go back and tell your sixteen yourself anything... Would you? I would tell myself to be more confident, I was always so uncertain, I never asserted myself, I was so clueless, I let people walk all over me. I've changed so much since then, I'm a completely different person, I have so many more flaws, I've made so many mistakes, and some days that puts me into a crippling depression, other days I wear my scars like trophies, because I will never be hurt like that again, I've learnt lessons. Because even through all of that I have come out of it something more if that makes sense, I might be a mess, I might be a disaster, I might be depressed, I might have a terrible reputation, I might be weird, unpredictable, emotional, unstable... but that's because something happened, I've changed, perhaps not for the better, but I'm more than I was. I made concious decisions, good or bad, I followed them through, I decided to go with what felt right consequences be damned, I'd never have done that at 16. I'll always yearn for those carefree days but sometimes I'm happy being the mess I am, even if that means I'm not exactly likeable, that makes me something more than a cipher, it makes me a person, a character, a reality, not a blank page. There is some good parts too, there must be, some people stick around. So odd as it sounds... Listening to music I loved as a teenager is more satisfying because the songs are about dissatisfaction with growing up, with romance, with strange beguiling emotions I'm only still figuring out myself, I'm a teenager at heart, I haven't got it figured it out yet. I could spend a lifetime wishing I was still carefree and hapless but I'm somewhat happy to know I've grown... Into a right old mass of contradictions, strange but true.

A funny thing about me, I'm having an intimate love affair with familiarity. It's ongoing, I've been more intimate and in love with familiarity than anything else I've ever known. Change is that devilish delight on a motorbike who frequently visits, I'm enchanted by it sometimes, other times I've horrified by the prospect. Most of the time I stick to what is familiar, what is safe, because I'm comfortable, and happy, and relaxed when I'm in a familiar environment. I will always circle back to the same music at the end of the day, the same songs, the same books, the same films, the same games, because I know them intimately and I love how they make me feel. At one point they were shiny and new but that time has gone, they have merged into my past and become things that were always there. As a child I always hated change, my parents will tell stories with hilarious regularity about my reactions to the new car, getting rid of the cots, decorating various rooms, new clothes... That's why when I'm listening to music not only am I transported to my past life, I'm also ridiculously at ease and happy...

Nostalgia will be the death of me.