FEATURE | NOSTALGIA
Written by Melissa Jimenez Najera (she/her) | @melissadcarmen | Contributing Writer
My therapist once told me that nostalgia isn’t about missing the big things that happened, it is about the little pieces of life I left when I gave myself completely to a moment.
When I decided to move abroad I knew I’d miss my family, my friends, the food, and the city where I lived for 30 years. But nothing prepared me to miss the small things about the house where I spent most of my life and how that would shape who I want to be.
I’ve dreamt of the house I grew up in almost every day since it sold six years ago. It reminds me of simpler times, times when my family were all together. Times when I could shut my door and enter a world of my own, completely under my control, where no one was allowed to disrupt it, and I miss it. Now I live in a house with three other people. I share a room with my boyfriend and nothing is totally mine anymore; only the drawer filled with mementoes still carries a sense of who I am.
My bedroom evolved with all the different stages of my life. When emo culture influenced me my walls were filled with posters from bands, and my bathroom was filled with hair products. Good Charlotte and Green Day filled the air with the vibe that no one understood me. When I started daydreaming about buying a van, driving from coast to coast, and learning to play the ukulele, I painted my room with earthly colours. There was a globe on the floor and a wall tapestry above my bed. Having these objects on display solidified who I was at that moment and helped me define the stages of my life. I now feel like I’ve lost who I am, what moves me, what music I like. Everything is foreign and new and I feel stripped to my bones. The clothes I bought are a mixture of all my past selves and nothing suits me. The décor of my current room is a mixture of my boyfriend’s electronics and guitars, a used nightstand, empty suitcases beneath the bed, a lonely calendar, and cheap fairy lights on the wall. It doesn’t feel like home.
I found out that moving abroad means constantly moving houses and rooms in search of a better life. I often wonder, without a permanent place, who am I? If the walls are bare, if the furniture belongs to someone else, if there is not a space that belongs to me anymore, what is the theme of my life at this moment? Before, when life got difficult I could go to my little hiding spots around my house and sneak a cigarette or listen to music. I could go to the roof to see life from above and imagine that the streets were like a chess board where I could move the pieces around. I could go to the yard, bring a sleeping bag, and lay there taking in the little bit of fresh air in an otherwise extremely polluted city. That house was also the place where my friends and I would usually end our nights out, having stolen a drink from my father’s liquor cabinet. All of that is gone now, it will never happen again and it often makes me cry. The nostalgia of the house that saw me grow up for 26 years is now an apartment complex. The memories of my brother sharing a Guinness with me after my first break-up are nothing but dust.
It's scary and sad to think that when I visit my home country my room won’t exist anymore. There will be no place that is just mine; just like here. I’m in this in-between where nothing belongs to me. I don’t belong anywhere. My old house used to be my golden cage, no matter what bad things happened in my home country, in my family, or my life, that house and my room were my safe spaces and nothing could penetrate them.
It's taken me a couple of therapy sessions to realise that nostalgia is not all bad and it serves a purpose. Nostalgia forces you to look at what you lost with love. It motivates you to search for those missing pieces in new places, new people, and a new you. Moving abroad changed my perspective on life. The world is less scary here, the houses don’t matter too much anymore. Now I can find the rooftop that I lost in the mountains, I can find the fresh air by walking to the sea, and I can share another beer with my partner and my new friends in little hidden bars around the city. It is the outside that matters here.
The purple bougainvillaea flowers that used to wrap around my old house now wrap around my arm as a reminder of my old life. But now I know that outside the house is where I can begin to create the new me, the me of the moment, the me that is trying, the me in a relationship, the me that moved abroad and is making a beautiful life happen for herself.
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