Nostalgia

I'm going to attempt (and probably fail) to put into words something that I've always wanted to.

Exactly two times a year something rather bizarre happens inside my head. I don't know how to describe it other than incredibly intense nostalgia - so intense I nearly tear up, though most of the random thought processes have nothing at all to do with anything depressing. Today is one of those days for me. It's honestly pretty incredible..

I'm not sure if I'm the only one who experiences something like this. Though, when people say that, they're usually not. It's the same every year: The first warm day in spring and the first cold day in autumn - never fails. There aren't any specific memories that stand out. It's more like every memory of warm days past are struggling to be remembered. It feels like my brain is trying it's absolute hardest to remind my conscious mind of something important from my past. I know how my brain works (most of the time), and it really feels the same as when I know something is bothering me and I know I have to analyze the shit out of it before I can let it go. To 'stumble through the maze so I can reach the exit', if you will. I think that's what my brain is trying to make me do, but I can never find which maze it's ostensibly wanting me to get through.

If it's the first warm day of the spring like it is today, the memories flooding my glazing eyes are all memories made on similar days: summers past, drying from the pool - still wet behind the ears, walking down a road in late twilight in a town I just moved to.. The memories don't stop. What makes them different from any other nostalgic occurrence I have on normal days is that my mind somehow emulates who I was at that time as far as how it perceives things. Most notably is smell. As I walk about my day I catch this and that. Petrichor, asphalt, chlorine, the smell of burnt oil after driving my car.. Any other day they would just be smells, good or bad. Today, each (even trivial) smell is it's own time machine, forcing flashbacks of a dozen different vivid memories at the same time. It's hard to explain, but it's like the smells mean something different to me today. They mean to me now what they did on the days I am remembering. I smell burned oil and instantly wonder how much longer my car is going to last. "I have to change the tires every two or three months and the brakesOH, wait, that's my old blue car... .. wth?" All of this happens in a quarter of a second in my mind. I forget for a split second that I'm not a 17 year old with a piece of shit car smoking a cigarette at the dug-out with his friends. All of that happens in my head in the blink of an eye. Crazy... And I swear I'm not crazy. "Mother had me tested".

Obviously, certain smells can bring something back on any day. Just recently, a coworker was wearing a perfume. I walked by her and instantly stopped as I tried to sort out everything my brain was throwing at me, almost paralyzed. She was beginning to notice and look at me strange, so I knew I had to say something.

"Your... perfume.. "Love"?"

"Oh wow, yeah! Yeah it is!"

"..My first.. 'real' girlfriends perfume."

I still love my first girlfriend, but yet I am not 'in' love with her anymore. That being said, that perfume still makes me weak in the knees. That's the closest similar occurrence to what happens to me on these days. Not only the extreme flashbacks, but the fact that my weak knees were emulating who I was when that smell, that memory, was close to the present. The difference is: Normal days I remember things as a 24 (or however old I am at the time) year old thinking back to an earlier time. The two days a year I seem to remember them as though they just happened - not thinking back, but remember 10 minutes ago.

What strikes me is that this isn't just something during my day that I think about for a few minutes and then continue on. It's a haunting feeling like I've forgotten something big until I wake up the morning after. I wouldn't call it unpleasant - I have some really good memories that are never more vivid than those 2 out of 365 days of the year. It's just... as I said, bizarre. I walk around all day in a kind of daze, mostly numb to outside stimuli, on autopilot for the majority.

I really don't know what to make of it. Part of me thinks there could be some link to genes. Memory is one of the greatest strengths of evolution. You remember not to do this or you'll get hurt and that doing this will get you food, etc. Maybe the weather is somehow tied with memory, just as smell is (more than the obvious "Oh, rain clouds. If I remember correctly, rain comes out of those." moments).

I suppose there's little importance or reason for me to have written this, really. ..I guess it's just that days like today I realize how long my short life has existed, you know?