A couple weeks ago when I was in bed with M, the subject of nostalgia came up. I don't miss people, he said and then proceeded to tell me that he's only ever missed one person. God, I said. Not me. I miss every single person I've ever met in my life.
I haven't really thought about that conversation since we had it, but two days ago while I was walking off a lemon bar, a caramel apple square, and a salad drenched in enough honey mustard for me to have taken a bath in--okay, fine, plus the two mini chocolate pretzel bars my roommate gave me and the two Reese's Peanut Butter cups and mini mr. Goodbar I pilfered from her stash of table leader candy--on the boardwalk behind my hotel, I passed a family that made it come back. The family consisted of a mom, a dad with a little boy who looked to be somewhere around three on his shoulders, and another little boy who seemed to be about the same age walking next to the mom and a stroller. I can't be sure if there was another sibling in the stroller, maybe a baby asleep, or if the stroller belonged to one of the little boys; I could, however, be sure that after a few seconds of looking at what appeared to be a family of four but could have been five, the family I saw wasn't that one in front of me comprised of strangers, but the one that used to be mine.
That used to be us, I thought. I thought it, and I saw: Glenn, young, hair short and spiky--and dark, way darker than his norm because his hair looks so much darker when it's short and hasn't been lightened by the sun--with Griffin on his shoulders and Keifer by my side. Griffin had short straight hair and a blue Spider-Man shirt, and Keifer's shirt was striped, the same shirt he's wearing in a photo I have of him walking Christopher, our beloved Swedish Vallhund, while he holds his brother's hand. My hair is long and dark, pulled back in a ponytail, and I'm wearing Glenn's FSU shirt, the one I wore so much it's now threadbare, really a shirt barely there. I saw it and I felt it and I missed it and then I thought of that conversation I had in bed, and I realized I was wrong. It's not that I miss everyone I've ever met, it's that I miss different versions of people I've known--still know--throughout my life. I miss people who aren't even gone.
Let's take Griffin, for instance. There's absolutely no logical reason for me to miss him one little bit, and I don't, or at least not the Griffin of present time. He lives in Orlando, yes, but I think I talk to him more now than I did when he lived at home. To say we're close would be the underest understatement I ever did make. Still, when I think of Griffin at various stages of little boy, I do--miss him, I mean--and it's not because I don't like who he's become and wish he were that little boy again. Griffin is everything I could ever want him to be. He's just not the Griffins he at different times has been.
Things are admittedly a little different with Kei, who also no longer lives at home, but who, unlike Griffin, I don't talk to nearly as much as I did when we were in the same house. Him, I miss very much, not only the version of him from Keifer past but also the version of him who exists on this plane. (That's not nostalgia, though, so it's the kind of relevance to this post that's not.)
***
Because I'm in Tampa scoring AP essays this week and far busier than I am in my normal life, this is my third day writing this post. Every night I write a tiny bit more, and during the day I kind of think about it a little, a combination which has resulted in my realizing that I was wrong in the point I set out to make, in what I originally thought. Originally, I was thinking that what I miss is specific versions of people from specific times, but it's not--or well, maybe it partially is because I'm thinking of a very specific instance of Griffin-Keifer interaction I would go back to if I could--but it's mainly the interactions I had with those people at those times, and when I say interactions, that's exactly what I mean, and not necessarily anything more. I remember certain moments, certain conversations, certain places, and honestly, I miss them so much, and I don't miss them because things are now worse, I just miss them because they no longer are.
When I was in bed with M, he said if he were nostalgic, he couldn't be there with me, which obviously isn't true. More likely he meant he couldn't be present, the way I couldn't be present with the guy I went out with a couple weeks ago because every second he was kissing me at the beach, I was thinking about someone else spitting in my mouth (yes, I'm a horrific person, can we please move along?). Nostalgia isn't like that for me, though--something that keeps me from the present. When I was thinking about M spitting in my mouth (can I just take a minute to longingly sigh?), it obviously wasn't because I was nostalgic for it because how could someone be nostalgic for someone or something that just happened the prior week?
Nostalgia for me is just something that's there--that's often there--an intrinsic part of my life. Even if I don't actively miss it every second of the day, I always miss when I used to call Keifer my dolly just like I always miss the Glenn-Griffin-Keifer-Kelly-Christopher family bed and the five years of coffee on Friday afternoons with Griffin and my Crystal-Jeffrey-Adrian-Jordan seventh period planning in 2014-15 and the time I had the nerve to ask a customer at Denny's if he'd call me if I gave him my phone number and he ended up being my boyfriend for a year and going to Louie's house on days off of school and Buddy being a part of our house and finally meeting Geoff for the first time after making up stories and fake scenarios about him for five years and going to that Led Zeppelin laser light show with Chris that time when we weren't in our right minds and a car full of boys almost tipped my Fiat while we laughed like fools and pretty literally everything that's ever happened in my life. I don't miss them because I want them to happen again, I just miss them because they once were but no longer are.
Except
I don't exactly believe that's true.
(The part about no longer are)
It's my personal belief that time isn't straight. It's my personal belief that everything that's ever happened to everybody everywhere is happening to everybody everywhere all the time. Right here where I'm sitting at the Marriott Waterside in Tampa? Right under my chair? Cuban fishermen are hanging out smoking cigars; Hernando de Soto is slaughtering Native Americans; Andrew Jackson, in typical Andrew Jackson style, is starting the First Seminole War. It's all happening, over and over and over again, and it doesn't stop. I believe that of everything (one day I'll tell you about when I used to think Keifer from 2017 was living in his room, crossing over to now), which means all those memories that mean so much? They're not memories so much as happening on a different plane.
Someplane (can we make that a word?), I'm laughing hysterically on the playground with my high school boyfriend after having gotten something questionable in my eye; someplane, I'm standing with Adam Shoji having a conversation about how he remembers meeting me the last time Seaway played; someplane I'm at Urbis Orbis in Chicago with Chris meeting the cutest boy we had ever met; someplane, my dolly and my doggie and my Griffy and, yes, even my Glennjamin are lying under a yellow comforter with blue flowers ready to wake up and live the rest of our lives.
And somehow, that makes me much happier than it makes me sad.
I haven't really thought about that conversation since we had it, but two days ago while I was walking off a lemon bar, a caramel apple square, and a salad drenched in enough honey mustard for me to have taken a bath in--okay, fine, plus the two mini chocolate pretzel bars my roommate gave me and the two Reese's Peanut Butter cups and mini mr. Goodbar I pilfered from her stash of table leader candy--on the boardwalk behind my hotel, I passed a family that made it come back. The family consisted of a mom, a dad with a little boy who looked to be somewhere around three on his shoulders, and another little boy who seemed to be about the same age walking next to the mom and a stroller. I can't be sure if there was another sibling in the stroller, maybe a baby asleep, or if the stroller belonged to one of the little boys; I could, however, be sure that after a few seconds of looking at what appeared to be a family of four but could have been five, the family I saw wasn't that one in front of me comprised of strangers, but the one that used to be mine.
That used to be us, I thought. I thought it, and I saw: Glenn, young, hair short and spiky--and dark, way darker than his norm because his hair looks so much darker when it's short and hasn't been lightened by the sun--with Griffin on his shoulders and Keifer by my side. Griffin had short straight hair and a blue Spider-Man shirt, and Keifer's shirt was striped, the same shirt he's wearing in a photo I have of him walking Christopher, our beloved Swedish Vallhund, while he holds his brother's hand. My hair is long and dark, pulled back in a ponytail, and I'm wearing Glenn's FSU shirt, the one I wore so much it's now threadbare, really a shirt barely there. I saw it and I felt it and I missed it and then I thought of that conversation I had in bed, and I realized I was wrong. It's not that I miss everyone I've ever met, it's that I miss different versions of people I've known--still know--throughout my life. I miss people who aren't even gone.
Let's take Griffin, for instance. There's absolutely no logical reason for me to miss him one little bit, and I don't, or at least not the Griffin of present time. He lives in Orlando, yes, but I think I talk to him more now than I did when he lived at home. To say we're close would be the underest understatement I ever did make. Still, when I think of Griffin at various stages of little boy, I do--miss him, I mean--and it's not because I don't like who he's become and wish he were that little boy again. Griffin is everything I could ever want him to be. He's just not the Griffins he at different times has been.
Things are admittedly a little different with Kei, who also no longer lives at home, but who, unlike Griffin, I don't talk to nearly as much as I did when we were in the same house. Him, I miss very much, not only the version of him from Keifer past but also the version of him who exists on this plane. (That's not nostalgia, though, so it's the kind of relevance to this post that's not.)
***
Because I'm in Tampa scoring AP essays this week and far busier than I am in my normal life, this is my third day writing this post. Every night I write a tiny bit more, and during the day I kind of think about it a little, a combination which has resulted in my realizing that I was wrong in the point I set out to make, in what I originally thought. Originally, I was thinking that what I miss is specific versions of people from specific times, but it's not--or well, maybe it partially is because I'm thinking of a very specific instance of Griffin-Keifer interaction I would go back to if I could--but it's mainly the interactions I had with those people at those times, and when I say interactions, that's exactly what I mean, and not necessarily anything more. I remember certain moments, certain conversations, certain places, and honestly, I miss them so much, and I don't miss them because things are now worse, I just miss them because they no longer are.
When I was in bed with M, he said if he were nostalgic, he couldn't be there with me, which obviously isn't true. More likely he meant he couldn't be present, the way I couldn't be present with the guy I went out with a couple weeks ago because every second he was kissing me at the beach, I was thinking about someone else spitting in my mouth (yes, I'm a horrific person, can we please move along?). Nostalgia isn't like that for me, though--something that keeps me from the present. When I was thinking about M spitting in my mouth (can I just take a minute to longingly sigh?), it obviously wasn't because I was nostalgic for it because how could someone be nostalgic for someone or something that just happened the prior week?
Nostalgia for me is just something that's there--that's often there--an intrinsic part of my life. Even if I don't actively miss it every second of the day, I always miss when I used to call Keifer my dolly just like I always miss the Glenn-Griffin-Keifer-Kelly-Christopher family bed and the five years of coffee on Friday afternoons with Griffin and my Crystal-Jeffrey-Adrian-Jordan seventh period planning in 2014-15 and the time I had the nerve to ask a customer at Denny's if he'd call me if I gave him my phone number and he ended up being my boyfriend for a year and going to Louie's house on days off of school and Buddy being a part of our house and finally meeting Geoff for the first time after making up stories and fake scenarios about him for five years and going to that Led Zeppelin laser light show with Chris that time when we weren't in our right minds and a car full of boys almost tipped my Fiat while we laughed like fools and pretty literally everything that's ever happened in my life. I don't miss them because I want them to happen again, I just miss them because they once were but no longer are.
Except
I don't exactly believe that's true.
(The part about no longer are)
It's my personal belief that time isn't straight. It's my personal belief that everything that's ever happened to everybody everywhere is happening to everybody everywhere all the time. Right here where I'm sitting at the Marriott Waterside in Tampa? Right under my chair? Cuban fishermen are hanging out smoking cigars; Hernando de Soto is slaughtering Native Americans; Andrew Jackson, in typical Andrew Jackson style, is starting the First Seminole War. It's all happening, over and over and over again, and it doesn't stop. I believe that of everything (one day I'll tell you about when I used to think Keifer from 2017 was living in his room, crossing over to now), which means all those memories that mean so much? They're not memories so much as happening on a different plane.
Someplane (can we make that a word?), I'm laughing hysterically on the playground with my high school boyfriend after having gotten something questionable in my eye; someplane, I'm standing with Adam Shoji having a conversation about how he remembers meeting me the last time Seaway played; someplane I'm at Urbis Orbis in Chicago with Chris meeting the cutest boy we had ever met; someplane, my dolly and my doggie and my Griffy and, yes, even my Glennjamin are lying under a yellow comforter with blue flowers ready to wake up and live the rest of our lives.
And somehow, that makes me much happier than it makes me sad.
