you and i will never be the same.

on the nostalgia of the holidays

Lately, I’ve been drowning in nostalgia.

It started when my dog happily welcomed me home. My brother and I immediately began fighting over who’s Stella’s favorite. (It’s my dad, and we both know it.) My mom gripes about how the ungrateful creature never appreciates her. This feels right, even though the house itself — one my parents downsized into, not the one I grew up in — still feels a little wrong.

My dad and I are tinkering with a car in the garage when I spot a stack of old watercolor drawings. I haven’t touched a paintbrush in half a decade, but I find myself tracing my fingers along the curvature of the sailboat and the skyline. Art was one of my first loves; what else have I lost touch with over the years?

My mom cooks a Thanksgiving feast, and it is, like always, delightful. But as I’m making another Peking duck wrap in between bites of her wontons and 莴笋, I’m struck by a sudden realization: this semester, I stopped missing her cooking. I get to enjoy it so infrequently that it’s fading from my memory, and I’m suddenly terrified about how much I’ve grown up.

The next day, I’m at Friendsgiving when a group of boys from high school arrives. I haven’t spoken to most of them since we graduated three years ago. Basis Scottsdale was so tiny that I used to know practically everything about these people; now, I’m asking them what they’re majoring in and where they were this past summer. They still laugh way louder than we do and sport the same haircuts and outfits. But they’re strangers living in the bodies of my old classmates, and I don’t know how to feel about letting these friendships run their course.

That’s the blessing and the curse of the holidays. I’m back with the people and the place that raised me. Everything is familiar, but nothing is the same. Including myself.

Every semester, my parents think that I’ve grown taller. I never have, but I think they see the other ways I might’ve changed and can’t quite put their finger on it. So height it is. My eagle-eyed friends spot a few differences. They point out the jewelry adorning my ears, neck, and hands; I never even owned a ring in high school. And the bangs, the curtain bangs! Every six months, I change my hair just to feel something (IYKYK), and this is the latest iteration. I proceeded to dye my hair back to black on my last day at home; I’ll need something to tide me over into the new year.

Outward appearance aside, I do feel different. My internal monologue sounds older, and I’m sure the way I speak and what I say is different too. It’s the result of a promise I made to myself at the beginning of 2024: I wanted to be a new person. Many of the people I spent my time with during these holidays were physically with me for very little of this journey, and I’ve been with them for very little of their own journeys over the past year. Yet, I now can be more vulnerable with my friends and family than my teenage self ever would’ve allowed herself to be.

Sometimes, the bonds of a relationship are so strong that neither time nor distance can damage the trust you have in someone nor the affection they inspire in you. Nostalgia is both a desire and an unwavering belief that what was, still is. Even for the most logical Vulcans among us, it can be a force so powerful it allows the heart to overpower the head. On Friday, I got some crushing news, and the first person I wanted to call was the last person I expected. But, I wanted to, so I did. Irrationality is a beautiful, terrible part of human nature, and this Thanksgiving, I learned to be grateful for it.

I used to believe in this phrase: to be known is to be loved. But we don’t know each other anymore. We only catch glimpses of each other’s lives on Instagram and hear bits and pieces from hurried phone calls between problem sets and parties. You and I will never be the same, and that’s okay. I can still trust these people. I can still love these people, and they can still love me. How wondrous is that?

Perhaps I prefer this version: to be understood is to be loved. That’s a feeling I’ll always be nostalgic for.