You know that feeling when you’ve been feeling something for a while and didn’t know what it was till you figured the word for it? Like if I were to tell you a word for the feeling of “having a conversation with someone in your head over and over” or the feeling when you realize that everyone you see, everyone who passes you by has their own complex life that has the same kind of feelings as yours does – with heartache and happiness, and routines and family’ or feeling of ‘being attracted to someone but not being able to imagine a future with them’ or ‘imagining a life with someone you don’t feel attracted to’.
Remember the first time you heard of the word ‘nostalgia’ and how beautifully it covered all the parts of a feeling that ‘missing’ wasn’t able to? I was given a phrase like that by my therapist recently. I had not been doing well for weeks, there was nothing I could point at that must have caused it. In a conversation with my friend, I mentioned that I miss my kindle (which was being borrowed by my father), reading in my room (my AC wasn’t working), and my cream biscuits are hidden on my bedside table. She asked me to evaluate how first-world I sound when I complain about these things.
Very, I realized.
So, when the next day my therapist asked me to tell her about the changes in my life, I told her about the kindle, bed, and lamp dismissively and made fun of myself “imagine what I’d do if I were a migrant worker right now”. She stopped me (pro tip: therapists are a bad audience for self-deprecating humor) and decided to focus the whole session on my love of material and routines. I must have rolled my eyes, for she started explaining why these very first-world things could be causing me distress.
She said that we use things out of convenience. A pen to write with. When we use them often, they become a part of our routine and they make us comfortable. A Butterflow, because it’s smooth, cheap, and makes you nostalgic for the time papa bought you 20 before the boards. babyr is so attached to her blankey, that we had to buy 3, cut pieces of it, and keep one in each of our purses in a fear that she won’t sleep if we ever forget it. But we get it, she had the blankey during her time of deprivation, when she didn’t have us.
What were once conveniences become a part of the feeling of ‘my-ness’. And for a person who has been deprived of this feeling in places and people all her life, if her books, lamps, and the candle that smells of washed linen are a safety prop, it makes sense. It makes sense, but still doesn’t help the guilt- after all, I do have food, shelter, and clothing, not to mention a linen scented candle which I have done nothing to earn, but it helps me understand myself better and that’s a beautiful place to start.