NOSTALGIA

We are all prisoners of our memories, to a certain extent. The past shapes our present, informs our future, and sometimes, it completely consumes us. We cling to the familiar, even when it's painful, even when it prevents us from moving forward. Nevertheless, nostalgia will be the death of me. I breathed, overwhelmed by memories. Not the happy ones, exactly, but the fleeting impressions. The ghost of what-ifs that haunt the edges of my memories. It is not the joy that threatens me, but the relentless tide of the past, pulling me under, drowning in a sea of could've beens' and should have beens'. It's a heavy burden, this beautiful, heartbreaking feeling of nostalgia.