Nostalgia In Newark Airport

I am sitting in Newark airport eating a wilted, overpriced kale salad and listening to “Despair In The Departure Lounge” by the Arctic Monkeys. There’s been a few thoughts swimming around my mons lately, and what better place to flesh them out than gate C92.

Something has been happening recently. At a point in my life where I am about to experience more growth ever than I ever have – graduate college, move to a new city, become a real person, etc. – I have reverted to the habits of my youth.

First it happened to my music. About two months ago, I rediscovered The Wombat’s Glitterbug album, which I listened to religiously at the age of 15. For weeks I was hooked on it like I had been nearly ten years ago. It reintroduced me to the music I had left behind as I built a new soundtrack for my life. Lana Del Ray’s Ultraviolence, The Arctic Monkeys’ AM, The Fray’s How To Save A Life; these are all albums whose songs would leak out from the walls of my middle school bedroom as I imaged what life in high school and college and beyond would be like. In the past few weeks, they’ve resurfaced an reintegrated into the soundtrack of my life, seven years later.

Then it happened to the people I surround myself with. In the past few months I’ve reconnected with friends from childhood and high school more than I have at any point in college. It’s with these friends I would fantasize about the far-away-time after highschool with during lunch periods or sports practice. Years later, getting ready to leave the places we used to dream about, we’ve let those places steal all our attention and in turn communication slip. But this semester, I’ve seen some of my friends from high school more in the past couple months than I have in four years. After years of talking about it, I finally visited my childhood best friend at Cornell, where I’m currently coming back from.  

It happened to my hobbies too. As a kid, I was creative and artistic and would spend most of my time drawing or putting together some project, which usually involved a trip to Michael’s and a heinous amount of glue. I used to draw out theater tickets for my parents to give back to me to watch a ballet routine. I would tape drawings to the willow tree in my front yard and call it an art show. I don’t know the last time I drew something, but last week I started making crafts again as decorations for a dinner party I threw for Galantines day. I wore a red bow in my hair too, just like I used to do.

If middle school me were to sit in my college bedroom now, she wouldn’t recognize it. She wouldn’t recognize the people in the pictures on the corkboard above my desk, or the books stacked on my nightstand. The walls would be beige, not purple. But she would recognize the music coming softly from the speaker, and the handwriting on the pieces of paper across my desk. She would recognize the journal and pens I have only recently brushed the dust off of. She would take a long look at me and recognize herself, the same but different.

I don’t know what caused this resurgence of nostalgia to happen now. My time at UNC has been the happiest of my life. I have amazing friends and I’ve shed the daunting panic of not knowing what I want to do with my life and traded it for a job at an advertising agency. I am more confident and fulfilled than ever. I cannot wait for my future. So why have I taken such an interest in my past?

Maybe I do know why. At 22 years old and about to graduate college, it has taken me a lot to become who I am now. It’s taken long fought battles and trying and failing and trying again. It’s taken long nights in the library and even longer nights with friends. Calls from my parents and books on my shelves and texts from my friends – they have all amounted to the person I am proud to have become. Maybe, as the current of my life begins to shift from school to the real world, I am trying to remind myself of the things that shaped me into who I am. Remind myself of the girl I used to be, and for the person I will become to make her proud.

Or maybe I’m just bored in Newark Airport.