so here it is, three thirty-five in the morning. i've been playing wow tonight and IMing my friend alyssa. we started discussing nostalgia, which i like to phrase it i "acutely suffer from".
now, nostalgia is certainly not a bad thing. it can even be good, or pleasant. but my problem is that the level of nostalgia i feel at times can make me unhappy or hinder my current progress in life. before i know it, a happy time has passed and i am looking back on it, reminiscing, wondering when life will be that good again and why i'm not quite as happy as i was then.
well, i'm saying on this blog that it's absurd. lately i've been bit by the nostalgia bug for the first time since i got sick last december. honestly, when i was practically dying i just didn't have the time to think about anything but work, family, having energy and keeping food down. i'd spent the last two and a half years prior to being sick longing for a better time. once i got sick, i was free from that because it wasn't a necessity.
well, with the season changing i have been bit by the nostalgia bug again and let me just say; it's a bitch. i keep thinking back to the springtime, when i had just had my blood transfusion and was fresh from my job at foothill. i was full of optimism, never-ending patience from my illness, and in the best place spiritually i'd been in years. everything was amazing because after months of being barely alive, i noticed every amazing detail about life.
i proceeded to have an awesome spring and summer, despite still being very ill. then, a few weeks ago, the air began to change. i sensed it like a dog or something, seriously. i knew fall was upon me- which i don't mind. but fall leads to winter.
and the nostalgia hit.
suddenly i was thinking about spring, and how great it had been anticipating the summer after a cold, sick winter. i was thinking about how it had felt to first feel alive again, about the nights i was an insomniac due to prednisone and how i hadn't minded because i'd spent the nights chatting with alyssa over IM and playing cheesy games. i thought about how i read the great gatsby at least twenty times in a few weeks, and amused myself watching the horrible 70's movie adaptation. i thought about the good times i'd spent with family and all the beauty of nature in the spring.
then i realized something: one of the reasons i was so happy then was because i was 100% focused on living life in the moment and not looking back on any "better" time. i felt good again for the first time in so long and was enjoying every bit of life.
and you know what? my illness has taken a HUGE turn for the better lately. without going into a ton of detail, i have felt more normal lately than i have in MONTHS. i LOVE my job. i love my family. i love the fall weather. so what if winter is coming? everything else in my life rocks. i am getting better, and i can finally start actually have a social life again and all of that.
so i decided....nostalgia isn't going to be a bitch for me anymore. i am happy now. just as happy as i was in the spring. life is great and i'm going to make the most of it. it's fine to look back at happy times, so long as you don't lose yourself in them enough that you don't have the time to make NOW incredible.
i was lucky to get sick in the way that i had an entirely new view of life when i started feeling better again. instead of looking back on that, i need to keep it with me always. after all, men are that they might have joy :)
oh and how can you NOT enjoy the upcoming holiday season?! plus i've got wookie life day with the taylors to look forward to now as well. ftw.
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