Tagged: nostalgia
An ode to tuna salad
You know if I were at home I’d make my own and put it here instead, but I’m still at college so… source: Orthogonal Thought
When I was little, my mom used to take my sister and I to Costco. One thing that we always tried to keep in our pantry were cans of Kirkland Signature tuna.
Homemade tuna salad was an integral part of my childhood food memory. Continue reading
Roots
My mom tells me, the apartment you and your friend are renting next year has the same square footing as the house you grew up in, which kept a roof over 4-6 people’s heads. Continue reading
Thanksgiving Break Thoughts Part 1: Routine, Card Games, and the Old Days
A few months ago, my parents and I were discussing flight schedules; I was adamant about just staying on campus over the two-day break my university had allotted the students.
Those two days don’t justify spending a small fortune for the plane ticket home! I’ll be back home two weeks after Thanksgiving for my Winter break anyways! Other people will definitely be staying on campus for the break too, so I won’t be alone! Continue reading
Cutting Someone Off Feels Like Drowning A Puppy
You are drowning a puppy.
You are so tempted to let the puppy live but for some reason you know in your heart that this puppy, however cute and engaging, is toxic.
So it squirms to use its air path, and it struggles hard to win back the right to breathe but slowly it starts to kick less, struggle less, and all at once, its just a body, silent and stiff, still like death, the most hopeless, desolate stillness. Continue reading
Something About Playlists…
If you clicked on this thinking it would be a sizzling summer playlist, you were wrong.
(but there will probably be one up later next week!)
Does music ever make you feel nostalgic?
In high school, when debate seemed to dominate my life, I would download new music right before every major tournament…there are playlists in my library whose titles share the name of the tournament I was about to attend.
Songs of every genre were clumped together in groups with no collective identity, their only similarity being where and when they just so happened to be relevant.
Seven Final Thoughts about Senior Year (Graduation Edition)
One final blog post about senior year and graduating, I promise.
1) I think I have finally figured out why the college process can induce so much stress. The essence of college admissions is comparison, the root of all unhappiness.
Without comparing students to one another, colleges wouldn’t be able to coherently choose candidates for admission, and we know that.
We would never be dissatisfied with our own accomplishments if we didn’t look around and see what others have done with their lives.
I think my college is fantastic, but when I remember that I have friends going to Harvard, I can’t help but feel a bit petty compared to others.
My life in Roman numerals
i) They say that I don’t smile. Almost every person I know looks at my empty face and asks why I’m looking at them like I want to kill them.
I took a look at my face in the mirror the other day, nay – I stared deeply into my eyes and saw that indeed, I wasn’t smiling. My lips were pursed, my mouth was closed. I conveyed neither disapproval nor distaste; I was completely neutral of emotion. Maybe then, you can see me through my eyes. What is it that they say about eyes? That they’re the windows into the soul? Maybe it’s my voice. It’s expressive but meanwhile horribly deceiving.
The truth is that sometimes I wear my emotions on my coat like badges or flashes of color for all to see, but I can also suppress them, like a lid on a pot of boiling water. So perhaps I’ve been too suppressive of my emotions lately? Is that why people keep saying that to me? Continue reading
Nothing but nostalgia
No.Stal.Gia. Nostalgia. A beautiful word really, even if I initially didn’t think so. It’s meaning is even more beautiful: a sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations.
17 years old, and I’ve got nostalgia intertwined in my hair, in the spaces between my fingers, and balancing awkwardly on the bridge of my nose. It will creep up on me when I’m not looking for it, when I’m instead absentmindedly running my fingers through my hair or pushing up my glasses or clasping my hands together. Continue reading
Excited kitty
When you’re anxiously awaiting something, time gets distorted. It no longer follows a linear path, where you count down the days until what you’ve been waiting for. Instead, you follow it through loop de loops and pivots and re-runs, simply because your imagination is so strong.
Time neither speeds up or slows down. It follows a train that a warped three-year-old has constructed, going around in circles and boomerang tails.
Anticipation is a strange illusion. You spend weeks and weeks of your life imagining and re-imagining an event taking place, that when it actually happens, you find yourself comparing it to what your mind had dreamed.
Your fingers drum on hardtops, you find yourself preparing and re-preparing, wanting a moment to be nearly perfect. It’s false hope; events never play out exactly as you’d like them to. And that creates disappointment. It breeds frustration. Anticipation is a ruthless, lying thing.
And just like that, you’re looking around and the event has already happened. The experience of anticipation is replaced with nostalgia. The event has become solidified in your memory, hazed with the ruminations of your anticipation. Looking back, you can’t remember specific details. You can’t remember who said what and who sat where, but you remember overall emotion and sentiment.
Camp withdrawal
I miss everything and everyone so much, it hurts.
This is the first post published from Atlanta in 7.5 weeks, as the rest have all been from Ann Arbor.
I woke up this morning-er, afternoon, after a heavy 15-hour sleep and all of this emotion and soon-to-be nostalgia came flooding towards me. It finally materialized into withdrawal. Today is Sunday, and on Saturday when I left in the morning, I was mainly in shock. It was hard to comprehend that I would no longer wake up in my small dorm room and focus on debate for the next 12 hours or so.
No more practice debates. No more flow paper. No more speaking drills. No more independence, and no more walking long distances between the labroom and the dorms. No more beautiful scenery each and every day, no more waking up to my beautiful roommate Sarah, or randomly seeing darling Connor in the hallways and giving him giant hugs, no more of that. There shall be no more lab nationalism, or dance parties on the girls’ floor, or walking around in a city that I’ve grown to know so well, each and every crevice. No more of my favorite restaurants, coffee shops, or ice cream parlors…
I’m past that lifestyle. No more summer camp for me, unless I’d like to be a counselor. This was the last summer. In years past, I’d always cheer myself with the prospect of going back in the future, but this is really it. Even if I end up going to college there, it won’t be the same as debate camp in the summer, which really made the whole experience.
But at the same time, no more repetitive cafeteria food, no more dirty, unwashed clothes, no more worrying about not having a room-key on me at all times, and no more flip-flops in the shower.
So, there are definitely some aspects of camp that I will not be missing.
I come home to my diverse wardrobe, my big and comfy bed, home-cooked Chinese food, and my loving family.
I’ll listen to music I discovered while there or that was recommended to me by people I met while I was there, and I’ll make sure to make the greatest effort ever to stay in touch with all of the wonderful people I met while I was there, as I will be seeing them many times through the year.
This camp withdrawal will no doubt stay with me for the next few weeks, and I won’t fight it. I’ll scroll through the pictures on my phone, all of the selfies and candid shots. I’ll look receipts and ticket stubs like the sentimental person I am.
If you went somewhere over the summer or just had an amazing experience, don’t forget to remember. These memories won’t change, even if the people might. Freeze these moments in time, the important ones. Chances are, I’m not going to remember that one debate where we lost or won (unless it was an epic upset debate or something…*wink), but rather, the people that I spent it with.
I am never stationary. I left debate camp much more experienced and learned than I was when I left, and I rode an emotional roller coaster. I can say with confidence that I did not expect things to turn out the way that they did, but hey, I regret nothing.
Catherine Zhang 