The threads of Nostalgia bind around me tighter these days. Though I only just turned 18 and started my life – according to everyone I have come across—it feels like lifetimes have passed all before my eyes. I feel weighed down by my exhaustion of the destruction that is left by humans in the wake of their pandora’s box. The turning of cheeks to others' destruction is a stab to my heart that has bled for the people ten times over during my teenage years. My own dreams are crushed by the ever-present green signs that rise every day. A simple career isn’t enough to sustain a life that we’re supposed to live to the fullest. Everyone has a say in the way they think I should lead my life and I rush down their stream of ideas never once absorbing them. Rather, I get splashed and drenched --the sun will dry me up-- but it’s useless because the stream will drench me again in mere seconds. The guilt of not wanting to do anything drives me up a mountain, metaphorically, seeing sisters and brothers struggling to do everything they can to survive in places less fortunate and I think where in all these years did my determination, my will, my ambition, my motivation and my dedication drown itself. Has it been so long that I’ve forgotten where lies the graveyard of my own making? 

My parents are the half and half of a devil and an angel. Their support, their concern is a welcome change from the many horror stories of the evilest of parents. But they are not perfect human beings nor have they had a joyous childhood. It peters out in their behaviour often. It gives me relief that I know at the end of the day they are not perfect. Sometimes I dislike the expectations they put on me and yet I feel a growing guilt to my parents who have helped me when I come up short of their expectations yet I do not feel the necessary feelings of remorse. The feeling reoccurs several times over the course of weeks and days. Yet my remorse, my guilt and my shame are fleeting. Is this the life I am supposed to lead? A constant question of why I feel negative emotions so fleetingly? 

Then I remember that my positive emotions are also fleeting. At the end of a long day filled with hanging out with my family we come back home to discourse. At the end of a hang out with my closest friends that I so enjoy hanging out with I have to come back to a disagreeing and tiresome family. Will it be like this every day of my life? Will I always come back from family gatherings with the weight of snide comments passed off as advice/jokes? Will I always come back from friend gatherings and think I wish I had never gone out? Will I ever go to work and not say I wish I was at home then go back home and wish the opposite?

Nostalgia plays a big role in how I function nowadays. The feeling of hanging out with your cousins without the knowledge of how much better they are than you. Sleep overs that end in teary goodbyes. Friends you could meet without envy over their positions in life. Family gatherings where you would run around and shriek and cheer and the adults would smile and say “They’re just kids let them play.”  ‘Nostalgia will kill me,’ is a phrase I think about like clockwork and I wonder is it just me that feels this way or is there someone out there who feels it like I do? Is it just me who feels nothing or everything at once? Am I looking for attention by posting this and putting on display a diary entry that should be hidden from everyone but me and the three young boys who are my siblings?