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~ When life doesn't turn out as you had hope it would – It may not be 100% factual truth-but, it is 100% me.

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Tag Archives: Nostalgia

These are the Times

25 Tuesday Sep 2018

Posted by Heather Irwin in All Posts, Seeking Life Now

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change, Changes, Endings, Gap Year, Growing Up, Growth, Journey, life, Life Lessons, Memories, Memory, New Beginnings, Nostalgia, Reality, Reflection, Reflections, Regret, Relationships, Talk, Toronto

Sometimes I get lost in nostalgia. Today is one of those days.

I lived in Toronto for 11 years in two different time periods. There was pre-New Zealand and post-New Zealand and the experiences are vastly different from one another.

This morning I find myself in deep reflection, once again, on my time there pre-New Zealand. This was an intense time full of deep relationships, friendships, emotions, highs, lows, struggles and heart aches.

During this time I led a reflection activity for a group of young people using Billy Joel’s song “This is the Time,” encouraging them to make the most of their young days because they would not last forever. I didn’t realize how true these lyrics would become for me. I truly thought that this was a time that would last forever; at least for me.

Watch on YouTube: This is the Time

As I sit here writing this, listening to these lyrics again, I am almost surprised by how much things have changed. I was certain that my life was going to continue-on in the same manner, that I would be surrounded by the same people, doing the same things, for the rest of my days.

But, everything has changed.

There are beliefs, lifestyles, locations and people long-gone that I thought I would never leave, or leave behind.

Despite the fact that I was encouraging a group of young people to be mindful of their current situation, that it would not last forever, I did not seem to grasp this reality for myself.

There is one truth I know in life – things will change. I miss my friends, I miss the city and sometimes I even miss some of the experiences. I never thought I would be sitting here, miles away, having not spoken to most of these friends for many years, worlds apart from one another, living completely different lives.

In-between us now sits the large ocean called “Life,” and it seems impossible to cross.

“Sometimes it’s so easy
To let a day slip on by…”

 

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Round My Hometown

05 Saturday May 2018

Posted by Heather Irwin in Seeking Life Now

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Acceptance, Growth, Healing, Home, hometown, life, Memories, Moving Forward, Nostalgia, Peace, Reflection, Regret, returning

It is so strange to be back here. Back where it all began for me. This little town that formed so much of who I am, good and bad. Where I experienced so much joy, sadness, fear, shame, hurt, hope and love.

Each street breathes distant memories, rising up from the pavement and from walls of old buildings like dust being stirred by a strange wind. Sometimes the dust that rises is so thick I feel as though I cannot breathe.

I often ask myself how I will manage being surrounded by these oppressive memories, images and feelings. Will I ever manage to bring some stillness to this never-ending reel of embarrassments and moments of shame that I long to forget? Can I find joy here as well? Can memories that have long been stained and despised be redeemed?

I see a ghost of myself on every street, in corners, down ally’s, in buildings, and in the absence of buildings. She cries-out, asking to be found, to be rescued, to be safe, to be loved and to be free.

I search for ways to mend what was broken, picking up a piece of me that was left here, and a shard of me that was abandoned over there, and I attempt to find a way of putting them together that brings peace and makes me feel whole.

I ask myself if the town itself is oppressive, or if it’s just me – my own mind. I have no answer yet.

What can a person do, but keep pushing-forward, attempting to make things right, to find healing and peace and be better today than yesterday.

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To Realize this Dream – I Need the Power of the Force

04 Friday May 2018

Posted by Heather Irwin in Seeking Life Now

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Dream, Fear, goal, Journals, Just Do It, life, Nostalgia, Shame, Writing

I lost something somewhere along the way. Was it when I left the realm of the religious and spiritual? Was it when I had my son? Was it long before then when I had moved to a foreign country to be with a man I wasn’t even sure I wanted to be with?

When did I lose the ability to be still? To sit quietly, contemplating, or not, but being still, restful and at peace?

Sitting still now hurts my head. It is laborious and requires effort and discipline. I have to convince myself that it is a worthwhile endeavor and that it is producing something positive; that it is not just a waste of time.

I also used to write; I wrote almost every day between 1994-2013. I have a large stack of journals leaning-against our lounge wall reminding me of how I used to pour my life into words on a page. This was a religious act to me, just as prayer once was. It was part of my communion and communication. When I no longer believed that there was anyone out there with whom to communicate, I stopped writing.

I didn’t realize that I had been communing and communicating with myself all-along and that it was this relationship that had been lost.

I am on a mission to seek that which was lost – to find, once again, that communion with myself. I am also taking a terrifying journey to and through the past as I traverse my old journals, typing-up entries and key moments of my life. As I have begun organizing the journals chronologically, I have already experienced intense feelings of shame, embarrassment, anger, disappointment and fear.

I used to think that I was so mature – so wise and worldly. When in truth, I was such a child, and so naïve. It is going to be a taxing journey, but a worthy one. Who is this person from my past? More accurately, who are these people? The little girl, the young girl, the teenager, the early adult, the woman contemplating marrying a man she wasn’t sure she loved, the mother-to-be. Who is she?

I am determined to reconnect, at least, to the writer and the dreamer in her. To dream and to write again and to, finally, begin the task of chronicling and connecting stories into a piece of work that can be published.

I want to be a writer more than anything. It will never happen if I am not putting-in the work required to get me there.

So, mark this date on your calendar, the day I set-out to bring my life, my experiences, my thoughts, my relationships, my embarrassments and heartaches into a story in ink and on paper.

May the 4th be with me.

post-note: Though I have come to loathe this day and all the Star Wars posts, comments, jokes, memes, etc., I could not ignore the fact that this is the day in which I made some bold steps towards realizing this long-time dream of mine, and I need the power of the force behind me on this one.

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A New Year

05 Friday Jan 2018

Posted by Heather Irwin in All Posts

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Accomplishments, Attitude, change, Changes, Childhood, Choice, Choices, Confidence, Control, Courage, Creativity, Determination, Diet, Dreams, Empowerment, Exercise, Friendship, Goals, Growth, Healing, Health, Healthy, Healthy Eating, Healthy Habits, High School, hope, Hopes, Inspiration, Journey, life, losing weight, Mature Student, Me, Memories, Memory, Nostalgia, nutrition, perseverance, Progress, Reflection, Reflections, School, University, Victory, Weight Loss, Writing

I know I have been extremely slack in writing. This will be no surprise to anyone who was followed or known me for any length of time. I have a history of writing faithfully for bursts of time, followed by not writing for a length of time, only to pick it up and start again. On and on the cycle goes.

The main reason for this is that there are many, many, many things I want to write about that involve other people and I am not quite ready to put the stories that include other people (even if I withhold names) out there just yet. But, that doesn’t mean the writing isn’t happening. I still have to go through the process of writing about what’s in my mind. I just can’t share it yet.

These stories invade my mind and I still have to allow myself the time to go through them and let the stories work themselves out before I can move on to something else.

This often includes a process of revisiting the past and sometimes even reaching-out to a long, lost, friend or just trying to come to terms with how an old relationship ended.

There has been a lot of this for me in the past 6 months as our move back home has brought-up many memories and experiences with which I still needed to process and come to terms.

I have also become a full-time university student, via distance ed., working towards a degree. This has been a dream of mine ever since I left High School, when depression and anxiety held me back from being able to attend university. It has been something I had always missed-out on and, being someone who loves school and loves to learn, had always dreamed I would be able to do.

Now I’m doing it and it feels great!

I am also continually improving my health and nutrition and constantly striving to treat myself well.

I feel great.

2018 is going to be a good year.

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Confessions of a Facebook “Creeper”

04 Wednesday Jan 2017

Posted by Heather Irwin in Seeking Life Now

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Art, Childhood, Depression, Experience, Facebook, Forgiveness, Friends, Friendship, Growth, Healing, High sc, Invisible, Journey, life, Life Lessons, Memories, Memory, Nostalgia, Progress, Reflection, Reflections, Regret, School, Teachers

I admit it. I search for people all the time who aren’t my friends on Facebook. Usually, this happens during bouts of nostalgia when I find myself thinking about the people with whom I grew-up and wondering where they are, what they are doing, what they look like and how happy they appear.

I want to compare where I am, what I’m doing, what I look like and how happy I am with my childhood friends. I am always relieved and slightly joyous when I see that there has been weight gain, wrinkles, weariness…good. It’s not just me.

There are many people with whom I wish I had kept more regular contact. People with whom I am no longer “friends” – not even on Facebook. Sometimes I creep these people to see what life is like for them. I did this yesterday and spent a considerable amount of time looking at a few childhood friends and I was genuinely glad to see how happy they appeared. I was pleased that they had experienced adventures, travel, fun, love and beauty.

I considered sending a few friend requests, but got lost in thoughts of how it would be perceived by these people. I suffered from depression for most of my time in high school. This was before depression was really understood, talked about or treated. But, the biggest casualty of my depression was my social life. I withdrew from all of my friends and lost most of those relationships. One of the biggest hangers-on of this time period is embarrassment. I feel embarrassed all the time about how I was and I assume that people remember me in a negative light.

I was moody, judgmental, shy, confused, lonely and lost.

During these years my FB posts would have be the kind that you just get tired of seeing so you block the person so you don’t get the constant drone of negative status updates in your feed.

When I think about these years I am always overwhelmed with sadness for the many memories I have about stupid things I did as a result of my state of mind. I’ve been working on forgiving myself, and giving that girl a chance to heal and find acceptance; strangely, creeping on Facebook kind of helps with this. I’ve managed to ‘rekindle’ a few of these lost relationships and they have been extremely meaningful to me. Every time I send a request to a long, lost, friend and then we message back and forth a bit, and eventually just start to share life through the regular news feed, it helps normalize what feels like an extremely polarizing time for me.

I wish I could sit down with all of my old friends and have an open discussion about those years, explain what was going on in my world, express my regret for how I may have treated them, share my sorrow for all the lost time and then make-up for some of that time and move-forward as friends again.

My mind is full of many happy memories with them. I remember hours and hours of time spent together, laughing, talking about boys, playing stupid games, sleepovers, doing makeup, playing sports, passing notes in school…I see snapshots in my mind of us together on hammocks, acting cool at school dances, playing flag football, flirting and silly things like stuffing our shirts with balloons. The memories are full and rich.

But, then there are years where the memories are filled with pictures of school dances, football games, pep rallies and lunches filled with all these faces growing and enjoying life—but mine is not with them. These memories haunt me like shadows. Life was happening all around me, but I wasn’t in it.

So, I creep on facebook. I try to fill-in some of the gaps. I reach-out. I rekindle. I make progress.

I am so thankful for those friends with whom I’ve managed to reconnect because, the truth is, the folks with whom I grew-up really do mean a lot to me. They were the people that helped shape me into who I am today. They were my original cheerleaders, challengers and role-models. They were my squad, my family, my community. They exist in my memory as a deep and vast resource of life, joy, sorrow, lessons-learned, new experiences, comfort and friendship and I am so thankful for the ability to creep into their lives now and get a little piece of what once was.

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In My Room

06 Wednesday Apr 2016

Posted by Heather Irwin in All Posts, Seeking Life Now

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Creativity, Imagination, Inside Out, life, Lisa Loeb, Memory, Nostalgia, Poetry, Reading, The Knack, Tracy Chapman

*

When I was a little girl, I truly lived in a wonderland that was my brain.

When I close my eyes and picture myself in my bedroom, a million stories and memories wash-over me and I am instantly nostalgic for the wondrous worlds in which I once lived.

I can see myself:

– 16 years old, with window wide-open on a cold, winter’s day, room temperature lingering somewhere around 60 degrees Fahrenheit, listening to a Mark Pinkus album (piano music) on my cassette player, room extremely organized and tidy, lying on my bed writing.

– 12 years old, cuddled-up on an old arm chair I had in my room for a time, eating a concoction of microwaved marshmallows, chocolate chips and butter while watching “Fievel Goes West” or “WKRP in Cincinnati”

– 13 years old, trying to clean and organize a messy, disastrous, room while listening to the “Reality Bites” soundtrack, rewinding “Stay” by Lisa Loeb over and over and over again while singing at the top of my lungs. Eventually, I give-up on cleaning and go-about creating interesting outfits from my wardrobe. I pluck-out a floral peasant dress, leggings, black Doc. Martens and a jean jacket, sit at my desk and start to sketch different fashion ideas and outfits. Maybe I’ll be a fashion designer one day.

– 11 years old, NKOTB posters plastering my walls, wearing lots of neon, a bucket full of empty peanut shells before me as I continue to shell and eat peanut after peanut while listening to “How to Eat Fried Worms” on book tape.

– 10 years old, watching “The Sound of Music” while I cleaned the giant china cabinet that my Mom had brought with us when we moved-in with my Stepdad, and had been stored in my room, pretending that I was a cleaning lady working at the house of some wealthy, handsome, romantic man.

– 15 years old, baritone in lap, music stand in front of me, practicing scales, arpeggios, exercises, and songs until my lips began to tingle. Dreaming of being a famous musician and picturing myself as an older lady, still playing the baritone, and extremely fulfilled with my life.

– 18 years old, crying. Sad. Alone. Depressed. Lying on my bed in a dimly lit room, writing even darker poetry in my journals while listening to “At This Point in My Life” by Tracy Chapman on repeat.

– 8 years old , lying on the floor with my Children’s Worldbook Encyclopedias strewn-out on the floor in front of me as I researched the solar system and geology and created little ‘homework projects’ and assignments for myself. Eager to learn, to soak-up information, create work of which I could be proud, and trying to achieve a goal of doing a project about every subject contained therein.

All of these moments, and so many more, come to life in my mind when I think of them. I was so consumed in whatever I was doing at the time. I don’t know if it’s the nostalgia or just how my imagination works, but these seemingly normal moments in my life all hold massive amounts of emotion, thought, feeling, and emotional pull to them.

I have recently watched the movie “Inside Out” and I wonder if the reason that these memories have such a strong place in my memory and bring with them all the things mentioned above is because, for whatever reason, these are “core memories”. I have always pictured my brain as a large filing room full of shelves, cabinets, boxes, safes and file folders. When I have to remember something, my mind actually has a whole system of locating where the information was stored and, depending on which part of storage area it is in, a different way it is kept, retrieved and opened. So, I really dug the “Inside Out” perspective.

For some reason, these memories of me in my old bedroom, all had a deep impact on my development. I think-back to each of these moments as ‘special moments in time’. There is a file in my brain that ‘pings’ every time I pull one of these memory files from the archives.

I refer to a few of these memories at times I need to “go to my happy place”. I will close my eyes, feel the cold breeze coming through my window, the smell of fresh, winter air, the sound of piano music in the background, the organization and cleanliness of a bright room and the soft, warm, blankets on my bed and feel instantly relaxed.

Or, I will close my eyes, hear “My Sharona” playing in the background, see a flutter of creative outfit ideas and designs around my room, experience the thrill of originality once again, and come out of it inspired and energized.

I guess I still have moments like this when I’m in my room. They happen less often as I am married, so share the space, have a child, and often don’t spend much time in there when not sleeping or cleaning.

But, I still have those moments when I feel totally present in the moment and I wonder if I will be looking-back on these moments in 20 years and feeling the same way I do now about the things that happened in my room.

*

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Life is Magical

19 Saturday Mar 2016

Posted by Heather Irwin in All Posts, Seeking Life Now

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life, Love, Memories, Nostalgia

*
I don’t know if it’s just me, but my mind is full of memories that seem to be filled to the brim with magic.

I’m not talking saw the girl in half or house of Gryffindor magic. But, I guess what I will call, movie magic.

These are moments and memories upon which I look back on and see them as if watching a beautiful film. Everything is perfect- the lighting, the mood, the script, the cinematography, the soundtrack- it’s all there.

My movie reel is beautiful. I love tapping into that part of my mind and just reliving these moments.

Most of them are bittersweet. Unrequited love, happier days long forgotten, a time when life was less complicated. But, it is so sweet to relive the moments and experience the thrill of the emotions that accompany each one.

I love reliving life in my mind. But, I am constantly questioning if I am living too much in the past. I have, until recently, spent a great deal of time simply wanting to go back.

The positive impact this life movie reel has had on me is that I have started to realize how beautiful, how magical, life really is.

I seek to be fully aware of each moment because, one day, these will be the magical times I think back on with nostalgia and wish I could relive.

I try to live the moment to its fullest the first time, so when I see it again years from now, I don’t feel sad that I hadn’t known how wonderful it was at the time.

I find myself yearning a little bit less for memories of the past and embracing the present moments, looking for every morsel of joy, love, wonder, imagination, beauty, emotion and magic that they have to offer.

This is life.

And, it’s not that bad.

*

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