Melancholy

Posting eulogies for my puppy and then re-reading the eulogy for my father led me into the dangerous blind alley of nostalgia via re-reading old blog posts. You can see this all over my blog. I miss everything. I miss it before it’s even gone. (Maybe that’s when I miss it most.)

I miss all my old dogs, all my old bikes, all my old cars, every place I ever lived, all the girls I ever kissed, all the roommates I hated at the time, all the uncles who are now dead. I miss snack-and-naptime and school cafeterias and paper routes and all-ages punk shows and student unions and college libraries and hitchhiking and company trucks and dotcom parties and foreign bus stations and changing diapers. I miss my morning routine from any given workday of my life. I miss the 1970s and every other decade I ever lived through, and some of the ones I didn’t. I miss Tokyo 1967 and I’ve never been there and that before I was born. Sometimes I even miss my ex-wife.

I don’t want any of this back, not really. Missing it feels better.

Because I’m a morning person and an insomniac and a hard worker and because have a lot of energy and live with four beautiful humans who radiate pure positivity, I project optimism. Truth: I would describe myself as “happy” and I have never been depressed, except for maybe five noncontiguous days ca. 1992 when for some reason I couldn't leave my dorm room. (I miss that weird two week period now, which this explains me so much, dunnit?) My face smiles, kind of naturally. But I don’t look forward much, to the future. I am not much anxious or optimistic about the future. It will be what it is, kind of already. It seems more fixed to me than the past. I look backward.

I’m like, sad. Like, all the time.