Nostalgia, a poem:
I have found that for some,
the old song represents
a "simpler time,"
in one's life
when they had not a care
in the world.
Even though there are times
I try to join others
in that feeling,
for me,
the old song takes me back
to a time when
and felt the weight
of absolutely everything
on my young shoulders.
The reason that song
speaks to me today
is not because it reminds me of simpler times,
but because it was a simple thing in the most complicated time
that helped me breathe my way through.
-MHN
More and more, I am seeing people my age refer to various aspects of 2000s life as "simpler times," and while I am happy for them, for me personally, I can't relate to that. In a myriad of different ways, most of the time, the 2000s weren't a particularly "simpler time" for me as a preteen and teen. While I don't think it's wrong in itself to reflect on "simpler" times, for me, I think what makes a lot of nostalgic things special is that the world — especially from the perspective of an undiagnosed autistic black girl — never felt "simple" to me. So for me, nostalgia isn't about simple times, but about showing what carried me through…and oftentimes, it was something subtle, but nonetheless, still significant…
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