Nostalgia

I mentioned that I was out of town for work, visiting a place where I used to live. Here's the rest of that story.

When I moved to this place, I knew no-one within hundreds of miles. I was there to finish college. They had made an offer I couldn't refuse, so I packed up everything I owned (topped off, literally, by one reluctant cat) and drove four days across the country.

The day I arrived, it was pissing rain. This was a city—not a huge one, but still, I was someone who loved living in small towns and hiking in the desert. My first impression of this place was all puddle-filled potholes, red lights, and bus exhaust. I felt only a little less dubious than my cat. TWO YEARS. I would stay here the two years it would take to finish school, and not a moment more.

Then I met my ex. (Insert quote about how life is what happens while you're making other plans.) He had a child from his previous marriage, which kept him anchored there, even though, like me, he really longed to be somewhere else. I supported his decision—How could I not? His commitment to being a good, involved dad just made me love him more. But I wasn't sure I could stay with him in a place I had detested on first sight. Surely not for the decade it would take for his son to grow up. The sacrifice was too much; it felt like my heart would be crushed under the weight of all those years.

And yet I couldn't leave. The two things I wanted most were diametrically opposed. So my two college years passed in this state of uncertainty … then three years, then four … and then, finally, somehow, ten, plus one more for good measure.

Luckily, I didn't detest my new hometown that entire time. At some point, I accepted that it was indeed my new hometown. I even grew to love many things about it, like the climate in summer, the affordable prices, the parks and campgrounds not too far away … and, most of all, the people I met there. I made commitments at work and in the community.

Part of what I grew to love was just the comfort of putting down roots in one place, of knowing all the shortcuts around town and not only what business was on what corner but what used to be on that corner a decade ago. Layers of history and context enveloped me. Even so, I spent the whole time feeling like I was in some sort of purgatory, waiting, just waiting for the time when my real life would begin.

Eventually, my ex's son moved away and so did I, not back to the small town I had loved but to somewhere else that still doesn't really feel like home. Those are stories for another day. Until this most recent trip, I hadn't been back to the old town in three years, and the level of nostalgia and longing I felt on returning there was an absolute shock. It peaked when I met up with my ex at the apartment that we shared during my last and probably best years in town.

Oh my God, the nostalgia. It wasn't all about seeing him, since I've actually seen and talked to him many times since the bomb dropped. No, this was nostalgia about the place and time. I drank in every detail of our old home with reverence, starting with the utterly bland light fixture in the living room. This was not a fancy apartment. But I knew the history of every thing in it.

There was the coffee table my ex had gotten from his mother's old place, where we’d enjoyed many Sunday dinners before her dementia got so bad that she needed a nursing home. There was the couch he'd gotten from a cousin. Over the years, I'd met every relative who was a part of his life, however small, even the ones who lived farthest away.

Throughout the apartment were some things I'd left behind, from a desk to a single dish towel, which was threadbare now but still surprisingly familiar. Even more than the big things, like the pieces of furniture, these smallest details were the ones that threatened to drown me in waves of memory: the claw marks left on the cat's favorite windowsill. The smell of the kitchen cupboard, the wonky buttons on the remote control, the jet-engine sound of the heat, the crease in the bedroom carpet by the door…

The bedroom. I just stood in the doorway for a few minutes, my eyes filling with tears and my heart feeling like it would burst. I thought of all the years, all the joys and sorrows lived out in this single room. We had actually built this room right after his friend bought the place, adding a wall to split this smaller space off from the large living room. We had made love in this bed. We had argued and turned away in frustration, then reached out again. There was the mirror I had used to get ready for work each day. My cat had died in this room (an awful night). Eventually, another kitten had come along to hide under the covers and pounce on our feet. By the time I left, we had already outlasted four long-term tenants downstairs.

I opened the closet doors to inhale the wooly but clean scent of his clothes, then closed them again.

Such small things. I love them because they're his, and because they used to be ours.

And I miss them because, despite my impatience to get on with my "real life" all the time I lived here, it was as real as it's ever been. What I wouldn't give to be back there now, just to wind the clock back five years.

Five years ago, I was with the man I loved and, although it was not always smooth sailing, assumed I would be with for life. We were planning to have a child someday soon. We knew of no reason why we could not. I often felt stuck and tired of waiting (which, from my current level of stuckness and waiting, now seems quaint). But however far away my goals might have seemed at times, I still thought of them with joy and excitement, more than anxiety and fear.

What I wouldn't give to go back.

Then I wonder … what good things am I overlooking in my life right now, because I'm so eager to go back, to go forward, to be anywhere but here?