A look at Time, Nostalgia, Attachments and Grief

(Dedicated to Vivian Hayden, who lived with passion, spunk and a fierce zest for life in the midst of grief. July 21, 1924 - February 20, 2017)

(Written in February 2017 on a flight to Mexico City when anxiety struck)

Something has been off; I feel uprooted, floating in space and grasping at something unconsciously, like an astronaut in space not knowing what my mission is. That feeling something has deeply shifted; like being exactly in the middle of B.C. à A.D. This is my attempt at understanding the undercurrent of anxiety I feel.

TIME

I am 35 now. I am looking at a 20 year high school reunion in two years. I feel like highschool was literally yesterday; yet I also feel like I've had 9 lives since then. I toss and turn at night at the fact that I am 35.  I've always felt young, and permanently 26 in my mind and yet I think the feeling of time is now rushing into me; and causing me to lose sleep and question “what exactly are we doing here”?  I feel like time can actually run out…How do you explain feeling like things were just yesterday and also decades ago at the same time?   Why do I feel disoriented thinking of memories like that was just yesterday but then realizing it was actually 9 years ago?

NOSTALGIA

I listen to a Don Bleu playlist I made on my spotify account. I tried to re-create 101.3 Don Bleu, those good old 90s soft rock songs, the only non-christian music that I was allowed to listen to. I think of my first radio. A clock radio actually; it was a white cube I stared at at night while my mom tucked each of us into bed at our house we rented on Skelton Ave in Fremont. The one my mom thought was haunted.

All I can think about are my siblings. My first friends. Sure, not my chosen friends, but they are my first friends. We, at times, reluctantly accepted each other and that we had to share things: space, time, toys, food. Amber was often organized and aloof  but always kind and leading the pack; Heidi was sweet and subservient - a hoarder of paper things and snacks, and Luke was my personal terror, chasing me with knives and accusing me of being too extra.

I think about them because we are changing; and time is shorter. Things will be different in the future and this is sharply brought into my focus almost on a daily basis. I think about the past and endless times playing dress up with hand-me-downs, road trips across the country to the four corners, Mt Rushmore, Colorado, Boston and Maine, camping with mom and dad, swimming at the Poway pool all day, Sea World together on Sundays, jumping on the trampoline in Niles, catching craw dads in Poway Creek, going to Taco Bell and having a budget of two things and a soda or three things and water, inside jokes that only make sense to us (You’re a hypocrite! Well you’re a democrat!), fighting over Nintendo, mom making homemade pizza every Friday, Sunday night Disney movies, having humble and homemade but amazing birthday parties where we decorated our own cupcakes and ran through the sprinklers.

I am looking deeply into the past now; something I haven’t spent a lot of time doing the last 15 years. Im a present and forward looking person; always evaluating now and wanting change, personal growth, more and more and more. And now that ive accomplished things I never thought I would and pushed through many of my own mental barriers and issues of self worth from childhood, my mind has shifted, im looking into what was and want to go back. I want to hold onto it and encapsulate it, fossilize the memories in space and time.  I didn’t realize those endless family memories would not last forever. I didn’t realize my siblings would have kids and we would eventually watch those kids make the memories instead, and that we would be grown adults with separate lives full of love, pain, loss and our own new family memories. I didn’t realize we would have to start thinking about our parents so soon - their wellbeing and their health and how they will retire and where and will they be ok.

Im thinking like this and all I can think is. Im not ready. Make it stop.

ATTACHMENTS

Why do I get attached to a plant in the backyard that I was waiting to bloom, but not the potential love interest that seemed hopeful and petered out?  Why do I feel like I would be destroyed if and when my 9 year old puppy passes? Why did I burst into tears that almost felt uncontrollable when Tillkum, Sea Worlds Orca “father” passed but didn’t feel that way when Muhammed Ali died? What and how do certain things get in and take root in me, while others that I thought would or should do not?  Reading my list of heart moving attachments I can see the pattern. Its easier to attach to things that wont hurt me and stay with things that need my love. My heart valves open and close in direct relation to feelings of love and hurt/loss/potential loss. And when those little valves close, my stubbornness and protection of self kick in and make it very hard for me to be open, and continue seeking love and attachments.

GRIEF

There is much to feel grief about. That’s what life has taught me; and it is not a new state of being for me. But what Im realizing is that time and nostalgia can also cause grief. Looking back and realizing how fallible and precious life is causes grief.  Knowing that what was will never be again; and that your memories and attachments are your own, and that even those aren’t permanent. How do you make sense of this, and hold onto peace and acceptance and hope?

I feel grief about time itself; about the loss of a religious system I couldn’t reconcile with my head and heart; about friendships that I could not make work or grow while still being true to myself, about the fact that you don’t graduate from college and then go to the man factory and pick out your husband/future, about men not continuing to love me when I thought they should, grief about society and ideals and realizing how splintered we are, even in my own family. A grief in the loss of a country idealogy and my own naivety that democracy is an inalienable right.  I feel grief about grandparents having passed on with another one very close to doing the same and battling her own acceptance of time passing; grief that my dad has had a stroke and my mom is battling cancer. Grief that my younger sister has battled Cystic Fibrosis her whole life and continues that battle against all odds, fighting for something as basic as taking a breath.  

 What I know about grief is that it is not like happiness or anger; emotions that are indicators of something deeper, free to be interchangeable across time and change that happens. Grief changes you forever. Grief is a new status of being, and while you have choices in how to live with grief, you don’t have a choice in it going away. Growing up is an undoing of the idea of permanent endless happiness that you thought was what you were racing towards when you were 5, 12, 18 years old. I don’t quite know what to do with my grief right now.

This is my current status, and I think all I can do is to watch over it; work on opening up my tender heart valves, work on breathing in acceptance of the pain of time, nostalgia and attachments as it passes through me, and love on the little girl that is still inside of me; wanting so badly to look forward to a bright future full of love, the certainty of security and ideals., and the endless family memories that make a life.

That little girl is still there; Watch her and love her.