I wouldn’t say my nostalgia is seasonal. The encroaching end of summer and onset of autumn makes it feel less like that toothache that reappears every few months and more like a strand of hair that refuses to lay right. Whether it’s a product of the current moment in time, the uncertainty lying at the end of my senior year of college, my unique life experiences, or aspects of my personality, nostalgia has become a close friend.
This September, I’ve been seeking validity and comfort through shared experiences. Of course, every individual is shaped by a distinctive set of circumstances from various environments and periods of time, but sometimes, groups of people are able to find a crescent of overlap with these experiences. This tiny overlap, though small, is still enough to create a space to forge connections or to just feel a little less alone in knowing someone, somewhere, has felt something similar. For me, this tiny overlap was shared along with others online, through the song “Normal Thing” by Gracie Abrams.
The outro of this song, specifically, is one that I saw a number of others relating to:
“Had a good time, but I guess I’ll see ya
You’re a good guy, but I guess I’ll see ya
And you changed my life, but I guess I’ll see ya
’Cause it’s over now, so I guess I’ll see ya
I know now, but I guess I’ll see ya…”
While in the context of the song these lyrics are obviously about a past relationship, I noticed how many other different situations this verse could suit.
I immediately related this to the old friends I had in middle school and our friendships that dwindled halfway through high school, now nearly six years ago. It’s strange isn’t it? Knowing someone so well at one point that, even years later, you still think about them on their birthday, or remember their mom’s favorite animal she collected figurines of, or how much she loved that one artist. What was once an inseparable friendship evolved to only getting a peek into their lives through curated social media posts and stories, all for a reason that I’m sure none of us could really pinpoint. Did we just change so much that we crossed an invisible line that made it impossible for us to be friends? I’m not sure I’ll ever actually know. What makes it especially hard to swallow is the many formative experiences we shared together. We were girls navigating what it was like to grow up, to step outside of girlhood into something not less sweet, but more tainted—something we thought we would get through together. Looking back, this might’ve been a naive perspective to have, but I fully meant it. Does that make it less real? I would say no. Instead, it just makes the pain sting a little more, and the loss that much greater. Maybe it’s old love that’s fermented in time, growing larger, unable to make its way to them.
And you changed my life, but I guess I’ll see ya…
The lyrics also made me think about experiences I wish I could live again, just one more time—I told you I’m a sucker for nostalgia. I’ve been to so many concerts where the house lights came back on and all I wanted to do was hit rewind and do it all over again. That hour and half of music is genuinely so impactful, that I wholeheartedly felt like my life was altered. In this age, to be in the same room as an innumerable amount of people sharing real joy together, connected through music and life as a collective, is a gift that doesn’t happen too often.I struggle to find that same feeling anywhere else. And we can never go back.
I’ve had a similar experience with reading. The act of picking up a book that piqued your interest, reading it, and then immediately wishing you could read it again for the very first time has happened to me more times than I can count. No amount of rereads, annotations, or reviews will ever match up to that moment you turned the last page for the first time—unpacking the world that was just built right in front of you from a mere collection of words strung together into sentences and chapters. Afterwards, I feel like I often find myself searching for similar themes and plots in other books, eagerly seeking to duplicate that feeling. Yet almost always, I fail to do so. Then comes the inevitable reading slump, the feelings of an altering storyline still lingering somewhere inside.
Maybe you’ll just say that’s what life is—you lie down, the sun comes up, and we start again. I won’t argue that you’re wrong, since you’re not. Instead, it just turns into…what now? I guess I’ll see ya?
The good thing is there will always be another friend or concert or book or moment—but their redundancy doesn’t dwindle their value; it’s just to remind us that this isn’t the end. The bad news is I don’t know how we move on. If nothing else, at the very least, it’s another indication that we must be pretty lucky to have something to miss when it is over.