Treacherous Nostalgia

Wow!  On a whim I decided to try to find the old blog I started years ago and a few clicks later, here I am.  The only reason there is an update to this blog 6 years after the last update and a mind-boggling (to me at least) NINE years since I started it is the fact that it is linked to my Google/Gmail account.  I have had my Gmail email account since 2005, and the person who actually created the blog was my first girlfriend.  It was fall of Freshman year in high school, and she and I hit it off in the Drama Club (the play we were preparing for was Our Town, which is a miserable piece of theater and my tiny role in it was a pitiful excuse for an introduction to acting, and maybe that's why my career ended  where it began - in high school).  She more or less told me that she liked and that we would be boyfriend and girlfriend.  Who was I to not oblige?  I was a 14 year old boy thrown into the scary and unfamiliar world of high school.  The world of grade school and its rules were gone.  The king is dead, long live the king.  Except I was more like a member of the royal family in grade school and high school was a dynasty change and now I was kicked out of the palace and subjected to life as a pauper.  Dramatic, I know, but that is how it felt in some ways.  I went from being in a familiar, comfortable world that I knew, had a great handle on, and was respected.  In high school, my class was only 50% or so composed of my grade school classmates, so I had to start over and I was not ready for it.  My grade school friends were more ready for it, maybe because they were not as happy in grade school.  Anyway, I digress, but the point is, it was a shock, and the novelty of a girlfriend was too hard to pass up.

So she made me a Gmail account (without asking me I think) and IM'd me the login and password and voila!  We used it first to talk to each other, and she broke up with me (the first time) over it too!  As time went on, it became my main personal email address.  By the time I graduated from college and lost my college domain email address, I exclusively used the old Gmail account, and do to this day.  So when I Googled Blogspot, I clicked on Blogger (I could've sworn I made a "Blogspot" account but maybe Blogger ate Blogspot, I don't know, too lazy to research), and I was already logged in, looking at my previous posts.

So here I am droning on about my early high school experience and my first girlfriend.  She was not a good girlfriend and I was not a good boyfriend.  We went on two dates in person, both to see movies (Over the Hedge and one of the X Men movies) and the rest of our relationship more or less happened over AOL Instant Messenger.  The point I am trying to make is that I am focusing on these past things that sat in my heart for one reason or another all the way to the present, nearly 15 years later as I write this.  Which is relevant to the topic of this post, what I am calling Treacherous Nostalgia.

Why "Treacherous"? Most of the time, I relish in my memories.  To sort of paraphrase Bran Stark, I sort of spend a lot of time in the past.  I like to think about the past.  I like history, but I also mean I like to think about my own past.  It is a warm and familiar place, sort of like grade school, whereas the present is threatening, and the future is uncertain.  I recognize that this is not a fair way to look at time.  What can I say?  I think one of the reasons I like history so much is I know the ending of the great stories - the Patriots win the Revolution, the Cold War ends without nuclear war, etc.  In contrast, the future is uncertain.  We could all die tomorrow.  As bleak as that outlook is, and it is not the outlook the governs my life mind you, it is a fact.  Tomorrow is never guaranteed. 

The warmth of the past - my personal past - is a happy refuge for me.  I go there when I am happy to connect it to current happiness.  I go there when I am discouraged to find motivation (remembering where I came from, who has had faith in me, and the love that has allowed me to get to where I am today can turn my mood around like magic).  I go there when I am sad, to remember the times that are gone forever and to deepen my sadness.  That is where it starts to get treacherous.  But even there, it is not by itself a traitor to me.  That deepened sadness can sometimes bring new life into the present, to help me realize that the present will be gone soon too, and I will miss it just as much, so I had better enjoy it now.

So, let's get to the point.  The treachery really comes when that past sadness is related to my own failures, and seemingly no reconciliation is to be had.  Thinking about the good times that I have lost through my own stupidity, by not feeding friendships, or some other reason, hurts.  Where my refuge of comfort and refreshment once stood, now I find only a cold and thorny wasteland, reminding me that the present in its current stage is the result of being forcefully removed from the past because of my own actions.

The memories that hurt like this are of things that are truly gone.  I remember sources of warmth which have long since cooled.  And things I associate with those memories create sort of minefields in the past, places where I had warm memories but the present state of affairs poisons them and even unassociated memories which surround them.

I was engaged to a girl to whom I am no longer engaged.  That was hard!  I am very joyful to say I am now engaged to another, wonderful woman, and I do not mean to disparage that relationship at all.  It means the entire world to me.  The point I am trying to make is only that sometimes, things unrelated to that ex fiancee from years ago, but which, temporally, are related to her, are poisoned by the fact that memories of her are treacherous, like a minefield.  I can try to walk around in memories from that time, but there is a chance that I will hit a mine and the memories will turn sour and start to hurt.  That, I suppose, is the treachery.

Solution?  Fortunately, as I have said, I recognize that the present is what I will yearn for in the future, so enjoying it, embracing it, finding refuge in the PRESENT, I believe, is something I should try to do more.  The past is a warm, lovely place.  I love to visit it.  I always will.  But the present can be just as warm, and sometimes can be even sweeter.  I don't give it enough credit, and one day I will miss it.  I will always be able to visit it later, but it will have a tang of pain in it because it is gone.  Today, it is here.  And it is a source of strong, present joy that requires no mental time machine to experience.  And if a nuclear war puts the UN in UNCERTAIN, then at least the present had its time to shine even if it did not get to turn into the easy-to-love past.  Thank you, God, for the present.  Thank you God for the past.  Thank you God, for hope for the future.

I hope these thoughts have not been too rambling.  When I wrote them, future reader, they did make sense, more or less.  But for now, I should probably go to bed.  It is a Wednesday night for heaven's sake!  Maybe I will update this small piece of the Internet soon, and I will try to make it a more positive thought next time.  I really am a happy person, but finding this just made me nostalgic, and highlighting the traitorous nostalgia just seemed like what I was meant to put here, for now.