Dear Nostalgia,
I hate you. And yet, you are brilliant. Because if I ever stop hating you, I will long for the days when I did hate you and then I will hate you all over again.
The French called you maladie du pays—the disease of home—which, though I hate you, does not do you justice. The Spaniards called you el mal de corazón—a wrongness in the heart—which is a lot closer to what you’re doing to me. You used to be a diagnosable medical condition and I give you mad props for that. During the Civil War alone, eighty-six people died from you.
You obviously plan to take me next.
Oh, it’s not my homeland that you seduce me with (though I do sometimes pine for the dollar well drinks at Pat’s Tap in Hawkeye, Iowa). It’s not those stupid 80s shows either, no matter how drolly Mo Rocca can recall the Rubik’s Cube.
It is when I lie down in my bed next to my wonderful husband, while our boys (ages five and three) sleep snugly in their bunk beds. That’s when you poison me. Because of you, Nostalgia, I am not lulled to sleep with thoughts of my growed-up boys’ future double wedding to the virginal twins of my best friend Sharise. Nor am I taken away to a magical island where my husband and I madly make love and then eat a bucket of nachos.
No. Not since Jake Hammond moved to town.
Like a backward-flowing River Styx you have seeped into my nights, Nostalgia. You’ve inked some deal with my Bible-camp boyfriend and Morpheus himself to kill me slowly with my own dream, which isn’t a dream at all, now is it? No! Your weapon is my own memory! It is Jake’s Drakkar Noir-dipped neck, his hands steadily moving toward my ass as we cling to each other during the final song of eighth grade’s “Summer Goodbye” dance!
“Sweet Child O’ Mine” by Guns N’ Roses, but you already knew that, didn’t you, Nostalgia? Didn’t you?!?!?
Damn you, Nostalgia! Why won’t you let me appreciate those sweet children of mine today instead of longing for today twenty years from now, if you even allow me to make it to then? Why won’t you let me appreciate “Sweet Child O’ Mine” as a stellar rock ballad when I hear it, instead of ripping me back to one sultry night in 1988 at Camp Ewalu. The night I wore a halter top, the night Jake Hammond first feathered his fingers down my bare spine … Oh God! Make it stop!
You’ve got me in your sweaty claws now, Nostalgia. Even “Sweet Child O’ Mine” is about you, you, you. Just keep digging in your nails. The doctors said you induced a “wasting of the vital powers” among Civil War soldiers. You are showing no mercy to me.
If you haven’t killed me by the time you get this, it’s just because I’m not home. I’m parked outside Jake Hammond’s Linden Hills apartment, my eyes of the bluest skies thinking of pain, wondering why it all passed me by.
You’ll find me. It will only be a matter of time.
Thanks a lot, asshole.
Wish I were here,
Stephanie Wilbur Ash
Fridley, Minnesota
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