A list of irrational things I miss that make no sense
and how there's no way to get any of it back thanks to Einstein *eyeroll*
I miss each and every second of my past life even though I’m so incredibly grateful for everything I have now. I’m already missing the beginning of this year even though I was unemployed living off the last few hundred dollars of my savings not knowing if my car was going to be re-po’d (but everything is okay because I got a job!). The beginning of the year held so much promise for what’s to come and I miss having the false illusion that good things are still yet to come. At this point in time, they’ve come and gone and decided not overstay their welcome.
I miss the days when I was still living/breathing/laughing on a planet that you were also living/breathing on. Granted you weren’t laughing but the fact that your skin was still warm to touch was enough. The beginning of May took that from and I wish I could go back just to feel your skin one more time before it turned cold.
I miss being a child before I understood the concept of time and how everyone’s days are limited. I would think I had infinite days with the people and pets I love. Now all I can think about is death and the dwindling sand in the hourglass of time. I miss when I didn’t know that a time will come one day when I’m here but you’re not. I miss being dumb and stupid and not knowing what it means when someone dies.
What is death even? What’s the point of spending all these years on a dying planet when we’re all going to die anyway? What’s the point of Orpheus going to the underworld to save Eurydice if he was going to lose it all with just a backwards glance? It feels like we’ve all numbed out any feelings about our own mortality when the sad reality is that it’s all just temporary. Quite frankly, what is the point of any of this? The preponderance of this illusion we’re forced to inhabit for ~90 years (if we’re lucky), feels like an elaborate brainwashing.
I miss when a new Harry Potter book came out once a year and you had something to look forward to. I would stay up all night racing to finish it over the weekend so I could talk about it in school on Monday. I miss that hope I had as a 10 year old waiting waiting waiting for my letter from Hogwarts. Desperately wishing it was real so I can escape from reality. Why did 10 year old me even need an escape from reality? I miss when J.K. Rowling wasn’t a raging transphobe and the Harry Potter franchise wasn’t trying to desperately stay alive by churning out Broadway plays and Netflix shows. I think we need to normalize just letting rest.
I miss my childhood and I wish I could go back to hug that little girl so tight and tell her that her dreams and wishes are all worth it. I read somewhere that June feels like childhood, July is the present, and August is our old age. I miss when the summer months didn’t have timeframes associated to them. I miss when the hot days were spent on slippery slides in playgrounds and the jingle of the ice trunk was the only sound our brains were wired to associate with producing dopamine. My friend got married in June and she had a Mister Softee truck come by as a fun little treat. The ode to childhood summers gone but not forgotten made me want to cry. One day you’re chasing each other around begging your parents for $2 for a soft serve and in another day you’re literally getting married. But I guess one thing remains constant- the Mister Softee soft serve.
I miss when the world wasn’t burning. But I don’t think any of us can remember a time when it wasn’t. I miss a time when anti-immigration rhetoric wasn’t rampant and racists were afraid to be openly racist.
I miss when laughing didn’t feel so hard. I miss when it felt natural like It was genuinely coming from a place of happiness. I miss when it didn’t feel like an Oscar worthy performance for just the people you see at work or on the train. Remember when the Oscars and award shows were actually fun to watch? I guess the corruption of Hollywood being put on display finally put an end to that. When you’re young, they teach you to praise celebrities and develop these parasocial relationships with people who don’t even know you. I don’t miss that. I think that concept has been replaced with “influencer culture” and the weird relationships we create in our heads with people that we enjoy watching on our phones. How do I go back in time to tell little me that this is going to happen and she has to protect herself?
I miss when I constantly didn’t have to think about my inner child and could just be a child. I miss who I was before I went down a rabbit hole of “healing your inner child” and how my “traumas have shaped my adult life”. Granted there is truth to it, I miss not knowing. I read somewhere that we were happier in childhood because we were living in the moment making memories rather than reminiscing all the good times. Does this mean I just need to live in the moment more? Where do I put all of this existential doom?
I miss a time before social media. A time when you weren’t constantly bombarded with what other people are doing in their lives. I miss when comparing myself to things I see on social media wasn’t the first thought in my head and then telling myself I am enough and it’s just in my head wasn’t the second. Laying on the floor of my room looking through teen magazines and reading about makeup/beauty/fashion was all I needed. Do people even read magazines anymore?
I miss when I would look at my face in the mirror and not look at the flaws first. I miss that moment in time when only celebrities were getting injectables and not my dental hygienist. The constant fear of aging and obsession with looking young has been deeply ingrained in our brains because of constant exposure to subjectively perfect youthful faces. The overarching message to girls everywhere now is “If you don’t have or aspire to have an Instagram Face, then you better book that flight to turkey”.
I miss that little girl in me who never once wondered if she was too fat or too skinny. If the boys will like her because her boobs are too small or if she’ll look good in clothes because she doesn’t have a BBL (why do so many girls have this now?? honestly F the Kardashians for perpetuating this beauty standard.) I miss that time when living for the Male Gaze wasn’t something that consumed majority of the women on this planet. I miss those years when our bodies weren’t subjugated to the eyes of predators. If you think about it, girls only truly have a few years to feel this illusion of complete safety (if you’re fortunate enough to have a good childhood) until we have to constantly think about how we are being perceived by others. The sad reality we come to understand is that none of the precautionary measures we take to feel a sense of safety even matter. You could be a doctor wearing a white coat just doing your job saving lives in India and still get murderously raped. You could be hanging out with college friends under the guise that these are people you trust, and someone could still slip a roofie in your drink. You could be playing happily with your Barbie dolls and a molesting uncle will decide that it’s perfectly fine to take advantage of your naivety and destroy your perception of feeling safe in your body. It’s true and it happens far more than you think. Girls are just told to keep quiet in order to preserve the peace.
Do you know what I do not miss? I do not miss hiding my female rage and preserving the peace. I do not miss ever quieting myself just to others can take advantage of my circumstances. I do not miss speaking up for myself when I know that there is some kind of injustice being done to either myself or someone else. I have always screamed and shouted it from the mountains. My heart aches for those that have not have this privilege and still continue to live under the weight of everything that is holding them back.
Will I spend the rest of my life missing what has been? If we as a collective choose to abide by William Shakespeare’s "What's past is prologue", then our history will inevitably have to set the precedent for what’s to come. Are all of those mindset and law of attraction coaches right when they say your thoughts create your reality? If I wasn’t scared of developing arthritis in my fingers, I could probably spend the rest of my life typing things that I miss and desperately want back. Due to the nature of time-space continuum, it’s virtually impossible (time traveling books and movies are really such a tease aren’t they). Do you know what that loony scientist Einstein said about time that is still supported by some physicists today? Time is an illusion, and both the future and the past are unchangeable, and will play out exactly the way they were meant to. Linear time itself is a human construct but the past, the present and the future all happen simultaneously. Do what you may with this knowledge. I had to sit down and take a few breaths after understanding it. It’s all happening at the same time. It won’t come back, none of it will.. but all that matters is that it happened.
I miss every experience I have ever experienced and I miss every second I’ve spent with my dad. There is a place in time where I am still 5 years old and he is holding my hand and we’re walking to get ice cream and it’s the safest I have felt in my entire life.