“Sometimes you will never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory.” -Dr. Seuss
My Interpretation: You do not always recognize the softness of your life while you are living it. Some moments only reveal their importance years later, once they are out of reach. Nostalgia is the heart’s way of reminding you where you came from & what shaped you, even when it hurt.
THE THINGS I MISS
THAT I DID NOT REALIZE WERE HOME
There are pieces of my old life
that I did not understand were precious
until I no longer had access to them.
Not because they were perfect.
Not because they were gentle.
Not because they were easy.
But because they were mine.
They were the small, familiar rhythms
that built the background noise of my childhood –
quiet, flawed, messy little anchors
that I did not appreciate
because I was too young to recognize
that ordinary moments fade too.
This is the strange part of growing up:
You start missing things
you spent years trying to escape.
I MISS THE SOUND OF A FULL HOUSE
Not the chaos.
Not the arguments.
Not the tension that always pushed in from the corners.
I miss the feeling of bodies moving through a shared space –
⇒ the doors opening & closing,
⇒ the footsteps,
⇒ the muffled conversations,
⇒ the evidence that life was happening around me
⇒ even when it was not happening for me.
It was not safe.
It was not warm.
But it was familiar.
Predictable in its own way.
I miss the noise
because silence has a different kind of weight
when the people you once lived with
are not alive anymore.
I MISS THE HOLIDAYS I USED TO COMPLAIN ABOUT
The ones that were loud & dysfunctional
but still had a table full of people.
The ones where someone always burned something
& someone always forgot something
& someone always said something wrong
but everyone showed up
even if no one knew why.
I did not know back then
that one day
there would not be enough people left
to fill a room.
Now I understand:
You do not miss the perfection.
You miss the presence.
I MISS BEING A VERSION OF MYSELF
WHO DID NOT KNOW LOSS THIS INTIMATELY
There were years
where I did not walk into every holiday
with ghosts following behind me.
Years where I did not brace for grief
in the middle of something meant to feel joyful.
Years where I did not do mental math
about whom will not be there
or who will cancel last-minute
or who I am pretending I do not miss.
I miss the girl
who did not scan rooms for absence.
She was naive,
but she was not haunted.
I MISS KNOWING WHERE I BELONGED
EVEN IF THE PLACE WAS NOT GOOD FOR ME
There is a strange comfort
in having a designated place in the world –
even if it was a painful one.
✍︎ You know the rules.
✍︎ You know the rhythms.
✍︎ You know what version of yourself is expected.
Leaving that place
is freedom
but it is also disorientation.
✘ I do not miss the harm.
✘ I do not miss the dynamic.
✘ I do not miss the old life.
But I miss being someone
who did not have to rebuild a sense of belonging
from the ground up.
NOSTALGIA IS A LIAR
BUT IT’S ALSO A HISTORIAN
Nostalgia edits memories
like it is trying to save your heart from breaking twice.
It softens the edges.
It adds warmth to cold places.
It turns background noise into comfort
& chaos into something almost endearing.
But beneath the lie
is a truth:
Every version of you
was just trying to survive with what you had.
You miss things
because they were yours –
not because they were good.
& that is okay.
Missing something does not mean you want it back.
It means it mattered.
THE HEAD-TILT TRUTH
People will tilt their heads
when you admit you miss things
that were not healthy
or comforting
or good.
Let them.
They do not understand
what it means to outlive an entire chapter of your life
& still ache for the parts that shaped you –
even the painful ones.
You are not longing for the past.
You are honoring the pieces that built you.
Some things you miss
because they were home
before you learned how to build a better one.
Xoxo ♡
Whisper to the ghosts. Yell into the void. Just don’t be an asshole.