Ode to Memories

I’m a little sad.

I used to remember the old days with nostalgia a mix of nostalgia, regret, and a longing for the best things of days past.

Now, I’m sad that I can’t remember so well anymore.

My adolescence was 20 years ago, and when I try to remember, I feel like I’m grasping for straws.

I can see the people, but their faces are blurred.

I can see the memories, but they aren’t videos anymore, just still images.

I can see the pictures, but I can’t feel the emotions.

I feel melancholy, not for wanting to re-live or re-feel that past, but just to remember it.

My depression is not rooted in a longing or a regret for a life I wished I had lived differently.

I wish my memory wasn’t so cruel as I slowly lose a grip on the past, the places, the people, the conversations, their faces, and the feelings.

The visuals used to be so intense, I thought I was there.

The feelings used to feel so real, so vivid, it felt as if I was living them for the first time and my heart was going to explode.

My heart only explodes to feel so intensely as I did in my youth.

And I’m aware there were good and bad days, extremes in all emotions.

But something calls me to want to feel those times again, to see the faces, to live in the places, to live in a different era, to feel that intensely.

I have trouble even seeing or hearing or thinking how I used to be; I am but a distant memory even to myself.

Slowly, I withdraw back to reality, failing at the task I had set out to do.

Emotions calm.

Soon enough, I can’t even remember what memory I had been searching my head for.

The sadness evolves to fear that the memories of today will also fade, and in another 20 years, I’ll pine to remember the memories of today.

Slowly over hours and days, not seconds and minutes, more fragments come back and reanimate.

I am joyful for my past self, but I also start to feel the full range of feelings, contradictions, and loneliness I no longer feel.

I do not envy it.

I wish I could revisit and meet him without the hangover of emotions, but alas, that was the reason for the adventure in the first place.