Do you ever just sit back and think about the way people used to be?
Mom picking you up from soccer practice on a chilly October night, then taking you to McDonald’s for a Happy Meal. Dad reading the newspaper and handing you the funnies section because he knows you won’t understand anything else. Your sister playing kickball with you in the front yard with the neighbors and your brother showing you how to use your Nintendo 3DS. Or Friends having Christmas parties and smiling with you because you’ll never grow apart.
It all seems happy until it’s not.
People change and a lot of times it’s for the worse. Mom lets cigarettes and stress drown her in a pit of self despair while dad stops caring about you because it’s too much work. Your sister grows apart from you after desperately trying to grow up too fast. Your brother never learns how to control himself and reverts back to a childlike manner. Your friends stab you in the back one by one because they grow tired of you. Nostalgia can be your best friend or your worst enemy.
However, what I miss the most about the way people were, was how I was treated before I came out as gay.
People change and a lot of times it’s for the worse.
When I was little, all I wanted was to be a princess who lived in a castle, but I never wanted to be saved by a knight. When I played games with the neighborhood kids, I was never a damsel in distress. I always got my hands dirty. My mom used to pick out my Halloween costumes, and one after the other, they were all cute princesses or storybook characters. She used to tell me how much she loved dressing me up and talking about boys we thought were cute from movies.
But when I turned eighteen, I knew I wasn’t comfortable in anything I was brainwashed to wear and I certainly did not enjoy talking about boys anymore. When my mom noticed this, she became angry and tried to convince me I didn’t know what I wanted. When I came out, she had a tough time believing that the straight little girl who played with Barbies and had crushes on boys, was now gay.
In a 2013 article written by Stephanie Coontz, she explains that, “Nostalgia can distort our understanding of the world in dangerous ways, making us needlessly negative about our current situation.” This pertains to my mom’s case because she was so caught up in the way the world should be, that she neglects to understand why it is changing.
I remember being young and not having to worry about my sexuality which can be very complicated to explain now in the present. This ties into me being able to have sleepovers with girls when I was little, and my mom not caring.
Now, when I have my girlfriend stay over for the night, my mom and sister make it awkward, trying to avoid us while making snide comments about what we do. I miss being able to be around girls without everybody feeling uncomfortable. My mom and sister were accepting of gay people that were depicted in the media, but the minute I came out, it was ‘different’. I feel as though it’s normal for families to say this because things are always easier said than done.
My mom and sister were accepting of gay people that were depicted in the media, but the minute I came out, it was ‘different’.
Nostalgia can be very painful, especially when you remember the way people used to treat you before they started acting like being gay was a choice. I had many friends in high school.
I remember going out almost every Friday night for football games and cheering on our team even though we were terrible. I’d go with my old best friend, and he and I would hang out afterwards at his house playing card games and baking cookies. He’d invite my family over for holidays and we’d stay out all night laughing and enjoying each other’s company. He even helped me get my first job at a baseball stadium. We used to fool around at work all the time and eat hot dogs together on our lunch break. Every day spent with him was a memory in my life that I never wanted to forget, but as John Tierney wrote in 2013, “but even happy memories can be mixed with a regretful sense of loss.”
We didn’t stay friends for long after he developed feelings for me.
Instead of moving on, he went on to bully me all throughout high school, just because I was incapable of loving him the same way he loved me. Remembering all of the amazing times we had together left a bitter taste in my mouth after witnessing all the terrible things he was capable of doing.
He went on to bully me all throughout high school, just because I was incapable of loving him the same way he loved me.
My sister was my best friend growing up, and we never wanted to grow apart from each other. We promised we never would. However, promises are delicate and extremely easy to break.
She and I had bedrooms on different floors of our old house, and somehow we always ended up together in my room falling asleep to a movie. She used to sneak me Pop Tarts in my room when I was grounded and she’d always wipe my tears away. We used to go night swimming in the summer and throw Doritos at each other by the pool. Nothing tasted better than a wet Dorito on a cool summer night. It seemed like there was nothing the world could throw at us to tear us apart. But we grew up, and chasing each other down the street during tag turned into desperately chasing her for an answer as to why it was so hard to support me.
Promises are delicate and extremely easy to break.
In Krystine Batcho’s words, “Perhaps, some would even be tempted to try to rewrite the past to correct mistakes, prevent disaster or restore lost loved ones.” Nostalgia can mess with a person’s mind, making them remember things incorrectly. If I could go back in time and rewrite the script, I wouldn’t even know where to start, but I do know how many disasters I’d be able to prevent from happening.
I’ve thought about the past a lot and the nostalgia hovers around me like a cloud of thick smoke making it hard to breathe. All memories can’t be happy memories and most of the nostalgia we remember makes us sad because we are no longer living in those happy times. If anything changes in life, it’s the way people treat you as time goes on. You learn harsh life lessons, and nostalgia becomes a villain rather than a hero. Nostalgia to me sounds like something I should be able to look back on and laugh about, but all it does is pull me back into a place I want to forget about.
I wish I was able to confide in my mom and laugh about our day. I wish I could read the funnies with my dad one last time. I wish I could have a normal conversation with my brother about the weather. I wish my sister was still my best friend and could be trusted with a secret. But most importantly, I wish I could go back to a time when I didn’t know I was gay. Before my family put their confusion before mine, neglecting to help me through the toughest part of my life.
Nostalgia forgives, but it never forgets.
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