Many speak of nostalgia as a warm, positive feeling. It brings many a sense of familiarity and comfort. For these individuals, nostalgia is a means of escapism, taking them back to a time where they were comfortable. Nostalgia is a means of connection between family and old friends, allowing you to bond over times where everything felt smaller.
Personally, nostalgia fills me with a deep-rooted sense of dread. The yearning for what was quickly overwhelms the warmth of the memories. It feels as though the memories are covered with thorns, tearing at my skin as I swallow the idea that I may never experience these things in the same way ever again. I may not even remember them the same way ever again.
This is a common phenomenon, especially for individuals who experience large amounts of anxiety. According to a European Journal of Social Psychology study, “after being exposed to nostalgic stimuli, participants who exhibited a ‘strong worry habit’ showed ‘enhanced symptoms of anxiety and depression’ compared to those with the same predisposition in the control group.”
With turning eighteen at the start of 2025 and graduating later this month, I’ve spent an indefinite amount of time reflecting on my adolescence. I’ve sifted through hundreds upon hundreds of memories, feeling nostalgic for the experiences I have aged out of and left behind, searching for the feelings of hope and purpose that the memories should bring me.
What I have had to come to terms with is that I will not find my purpose in my past self. She and I are two different people. She wants mint chocolate chip ice cream, I want strawberry ice cream. She wants to stay up until the next morning playing video games with her friends, I want to sleep through the night until noon the next day. She gets anxious by the idea of sending an email, I advocate for myself and my needs. She wants to be surrounded by her friends and family, I need space to myself. She wants the boy, I just want a dog. She wants to be the president, I want politicians dead. She’s comfortable where she is, I’m uncomfortable and scared that I may not ever be comfortable again.
I think that what I’m looking for, she will not be able to tell me yet.
When she was little, she used to stand in the bathroom on the tips of her toes to reach the mirror. She would look up and see her stupid little pigtails come into view, and maybe — with a bit of jumping — could make eye contact with herself. She used to tell herself that someday she would wake up and be tall enough that she could see herself clearly in that mirror. Now, I stand in front of that same mirror and try to find her in it, now perfectly tall enough to stand before it, searching for her in my eyes and my face, wondering when she became me.
I’m not the only thing that has grown bigger with time. It has felt like everything I have had to do has grown insurmountable. I’ve had to pick and choose which pieces of myself I’m going to bring into my future and which ones I have to leave behind. I’ve had to pick a career path from the dozens of paths I’ve wanted to take, and every minute I become afraid that I’m making the wrong choice. STEM is something I’m choosing not because I’m extremely passionate about math and computers, but because it feels the safest right now. Even right now, I have my admittedly more urgent computer science work out on my desk as I write this instead. I enjoy computer science, but will I enjoy it forever?
She didn’t worry about this. Would she be disappointed?
While everything feels so much bigger and the stakes are higher, I keep getting reminded that the universe really is small. Every single day, I pass by my first best friend’s house on the way to school. When I think of her I can only find fond memories, and yet if I think of her for too long it becomes suffocating. I haven’t spoken to her in over a decade, and yet later this month we are both going to attend our graduation ceremonies for our respective schools. I won’t be at hers, and I highly doubt she will be at mine. Every once in a while I catch glimpses of her, out in her yard or at the grocery store. In the times she has been looking back at me, I feel like her.
One of my oldest friends is Megan Weakland. They’ve known every version of me and I’ve known every version of them. I asked them to reflect with me on how their younger self would view them now, and they said “I feel like my younger self would look at me and be proud, but might question some of my decisions. But looking at the bigger picture, I feel as though they would be understanding”
Hearing this from my friend brought me a new layer of comfort and understanding of my relationship with my younger self. While I have changed, she is still here. We both love to create. We both love to play video games with our closest friends. We both worry that time will drift us away from the people we are about. We both are still annoyed by our younger sister, but we love her deeply still. We both love and are loved, even if we don’t see or understand it.
We both want to be happy, and are willing to fight to be.
Despite the fact that I’ve grown up, a younger me is still me. When I look in the mirror, we are both there, even if we are a little different. I’ve been fighting through the waves of nostalgia to urge myself to believe the idea that growing up doesn’t have to mean leaving her behind.
Growing up is really scary, but I think having people around doing it with you and being open to the changes you’re experiencing is vital to your personal development. I think it’s sometimes fun to think back on where you’ve been, and think that it’s important to reflect on the past for growth, but I think it’s even more important to give yourself the benefit of focusing on the present and your future. Living in the now will serve you far more than the past ever will.
