Bagsy
No side effects
I received my second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine a couple days ago. No side effects aside from waking up with a stuffy nose the next morning and soreness at the injection site. What a relief that I did not spend my precious weekend alone combating fever, chills, or nausea.
Not that I had any plans anyway. Instead I battle nostalgia so painful that I wonder if it is worse than the expected symptoms. Everyone is nostalgic for the pre-COVID era; of course I am not alone. It was not difficult for me to stay home for most of 2020 as an introvert. People exhaust me. But I confess that I have especially struggled the past few months.
The previous year unmasked issues on both the collective and individual levels. It took a pandemic for me to realize that my nostalgia torments me. I appreciate fond memories but almost cannot accept that the past is gone.
I use work to distract myself from wishing an afternoon spent enveloped by Chicago’s lakefront air could only once more solace me. The pandemic exacerbates this; I find myself trying to optimize a self-productivity algorithm, rising well before the world to get a head-start on the day only so my mind cannot dwell on what I miss during after-hours. Every day feels the same and whizzes faster than the previous. After all, what else is there to do? I live alone. My closest friends live in different states, some flung thousands of miles across the country.
Some songs I often skip because memories of their live versions evoke feelings unmatched by listening to them amidst mundane reality. This list grows with the number of days since attending a live show. I know, first world problems.
At least before the pandemic I had hope I could easily replicate my younger self’s experiences. But it would probably be only a matter of time until another global catastrophe slaps me, scoffing at my naivety.
Everyone is eager to return to “normal.” This is foolish. The world is always changing. This is something even I clearly have trouble accepting sometimes, as it is uncomfortable. I ponder what I would have done had I known a coronavirus would turn the world upside down.
Possibly still wishing I were somewhere else, back in time. I need to work on this.
Some of my past escapes my woeful nostalgia, thankfully. Before writing this I encountered a decade-old Yahoo Answers question posted by someone afflicted with similar thoughts a decade ago, not to mention the warning at the top of the page that the service will shut down next month:
I was a young teenager when the service reached its climax; getting older scares me, but I cannot say I miss my junior high school days.