Blog no. 26: Blistered

Dear nostalgia addicts,

  Watching the sequel to Trainspotting a few weeks ago, I saw the now middle-aged characters latching to their previous lives and repeating mistakes of the past without missing a beat. I mean, seeing as they all were drugged up in their early twenties, their future was already looking grim. It's a miracle they all survived well into their fourties if you ask me, but it was sad that even though they tried to escape their past it just wasn't a choice for them, as is the case for a lot of people. Like how you get black-out drunk for the hundredth time, even though you promised to yourself you wouldn't drink again after your previous shenanigans, or how you decide to take out that tray out of the oven without using oven mitts, even though you've burned yourself the previous twenty times you've attempted this, as if this time you're freaking Elsa and your hand is magically immune to heat. Point is that sometimes even though we know we're making a mistake, we still do it because we feel the need to, and that's okay. Eventually our gag reflexes will reject alcohol, one hard liquor at a time, and our hands will be too blistered to even attempt cooking in the oven. Ι, for one, am fond of all those drunken memories (or lack thereof), and I can probably explain every scar I have with a cool story. By pure coincidence, those two usually go together. Who would have guessed  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

  I once read somewhere that "it's funny how day by day nothing changes, but when you look back, everything is different", more or less anyways. Looking back at four, five years ago is like entering a time capsule to a completely different time, with different people around you, different concerns, different tastes. Reading my diary entries from a few years back I realized how much different I was back then, and it baffled me because I didn't even realize it. Mind, me, I've only written a couple of entries since then, but those two are enough to give me an idea of who I was back then. I often find myself reminiscing about those times, much like Renton, Spud and Sick Boy did when "Lust for life" came on in the movie, not in a "life was so much better back then" kind of way, but rather because you've revisited those memories so many times, they've become familiar to you. And no matter how good your memory is, it's not like you're a reliable narrator of your own story, we tend to overexaggerate our memories to fit our narrative, and we tend to make them far better than they actually were. That's why we often revisit our failed relationships for another go, even though we know that the tray is hot, we still wanna touch it.

  Even in the off chance that our memories are actually as amazing as we think they are, there's still no point in feeling down that you're not reliving them, you should just be glad that you've actually lived them. Memory is a helluva drug, it drags you around and slaps you with waves of nostalgia, and it makes you reminisce about times that can't be replicated. All you can do is strive to make your days memorable and let go of the past. The sooner you do that, the carefree-er you'll be. It's a word, alright? 

"I wish there was a way to know that you're in the good old days before you've actually left them." - The Office

Your fellow memory latcher, 

Stelios Zesiades.