The Curse of Nostalgia
Yesterday I removed a dusty purple wrap top with pendulous bell sleeves from my wardrobe. I rolled it up small and placed it in a bag, ready to be donated. The poetry of the shirt was very loud. The first and last time I wore it was on a first date at a wine bar with a man from Hinge. He was kind, sensitive, amiable. We saw each other across a few months but this weekend I sent the text that signalled I felt we were on different tracks. He said he understood, and thanked me for my time.
Some clothes are just clothes. Others carry entire short stories in the fibres.
I have always been chronically nostalgic. Trinkets, gifts, poems, films, songs, scents, stories from my life. All interwoven with full bodied emotional resonance. I remember the cool weight of an engraved silver locket I was gifted on my eighteenth birthday. The musk and lavender smell of sleepovers at my auntie’s apartment. The polished hardwood panels of a childhood treehouse where a boy first told me he liked me. The exact opening chords of songs that still make my stomach tilt twenty years later.
Memory for me has always been sensory. Weighty. Textured. Atmospheric.
Which means when it comes to picking an item of clothing to wear, sometimes it feels like I need an emotional hazmat suit. 🙃
Psychologists have spent decades trying to understand nostalgia. The word itself was originally coined in the seventeenth century to describe a form of homesickness so intense it was considered an illness. Doctors thought soldiers could die from longing for home. These days nostalgia is not seen as pathological. Quite the opposite. Research in psychology suggests nostalgia can function like a kind of emotional stabiliser.
When people reflect nostalgically, they tend to feel more socially connected, more optimistic about the future, and more anchored in a sense of identity. Nostalgia often emerges during moments of transition. Breakups. Moving cities. Changing careers. The mind reaches backwards for evidence that life has been meaningful before and therefore might be meaningful again.
It is a strange little psychological trick. The brain quietly assembles a highlight reel.
In this way nostalgia acts a bit like emotional time travel. It reminds us who we have been, who we have loved, and what we have survived. In studies, people who engage in nostalgic reflection report higher feelings of purpose and belonging. Even the bittersweet quality seems to serve a function. The sadness keeps the memory honest. The sweetness keeps it worth holding.
Still, there is a shadow side.
When nostalgia becomes too loud it can freeze objects in time. A song is no longer a song. A café is no longer a café. A dusty purple wrap top becomes a small museum exhibit dedicated to a moment that already ended.
And museums are not designed for living.
Later in my closet clear out I ran my hands across a brown cashmere tracksuit. I asked my five year old son, “Do you think I should keep this? It makes me feel sad.”
He asked why.
I told him it was what I was wearing during some big moments when his dad and I separated. My soft, porous armour for active marital collapse.
He thought about this with the seriousness only small children can summon.
“Maybe you could keep it,” he said, “and wear it for other moments. For more happy moments.”
There is something psychologically elegant about that idea. Memory does not live in objects themselves. It lives in the meaning we assign them. Which means meaning can be rewritten.
Objects can be reclaimed.
I like the thought of that brown tracksuit slowly accumulating new chapters. Grocery runs. Lazy Sundays. Long-haul flights to new cities. A dance to Amyl & the Sniffers in the kitchen. A hug that lasts a little longer than expected. Hand rubbing against my back. A feeling of it all being okay.
Then my son added, “Maybe if you get married to someone new, you could wear it to the wedding.”
I hope my future partner is up for a bride in an oversized brown tracksuit.