Saturday, February 7, 2015

Nostalgia Early Days

Nostalgia seems to be based a certain lack of awareness of one's experiences, that is, pre-narrative.  Before we apply a frame, we experience "that stuff" of life without borders.  Surely, we do have borders, but for nostalgic crooners among us (most of us), they were more porous and less intensely explicit.

Nostalgia is tricky, partially because we cannot recreate that time, especially and precisely because the notion of recreating it necessarily pollutes it.  But also because the lathe of memory is too strong for us to remember accurately.

Nostalgia is like fantasy: best kept in one's head.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

47 and been a heavy daily drinker since my early teens. The last year or so has been the worst, about 12-20 beers daily. Day 11, feel stressed out, emotional, and not much confidence. I've had more wake up calls than I could write. It got to the point of some days waking up and drinking a six pack just to not shake and feel like I was going to puke or die because my blood pressure is through the roof. My marriage has been rocky, I have 2 kids in my house that I don't know much about. I'm sick of all the bad shit booze has done to me, my family and my career. Can't sleep much, anxious all the time and bored out of my mind. I thought after a week I would see remarkable results, but after reading all these posts I'm realizing it takes a lot longer to recover mentally than I ever imagined. My wife is going out of town this weekend, an opportunithy to drink? I just have to keep telling myself that I'm doing this for me and know one else. The hardest thing I'm working on is loving myself again. I've lost family and dear friends because of doing stupid shit when drunk. I've had it with living like this, I know I am capable of so much more and the clock is ticking. If I don't stop I will lose what I have left. It's a hard choice but it's the only one left. I have to STOP STOP STOP STOP.
These posts have been helpful but also scary seeing that it's going to take a lot longer than I thought to get "rewired". I'm trying to kill this demon, hardest thing in my life. Wish me luck.