who am i without melancholy and nostalgia

on nostalgia, melancholy and becoming: an update

there are days where i catch myself staring blankly at the steam rising from a cup of tea i made out of habit, and i wonder, how much of me is real, and how much is memory’s residue? i stir slowly, the spoon clinking against ceramic like a quiet, aching bell, and it hits me; i am a mosaic of every person i’ve ever held, every conversation i’ve replayed in my head, every place that ever reminded me of a face. people think identity is made of ambition, or will, or choices. but sometimes, i think it’s just a trail of fingerprints, some smudged, some pressed deep, left on the glass of your life by everyone who ever sat beside you and left without warning.

we like to believe we’re moving forward, but one wrong song, one flickering light, one faint scent of soap someone used to wear, and suddenly we’re not in this moment anymore. we’re thirteen again. we’re crying in the stairwell. we’re tasting a goodbye we never got to say.

and that goodbye, it tastes exactly like the papaya that sat too long on the kitchen counter in june. overripe. collapsing under its own sweetness. you bite in expecting brightness, and instead your tongue is coated in something that feels wrong, fermented at the edges. not quite sour. not quite sweet. a taste that says, you waited too long. and you chew anyway, not because you want to, but because you already committed to it, like the moment you knew it was ending but still replied “okay, take care.”

it tastes like the steel spoon you accidentally left too long in your mouth as a kid, cool and metallic and out of place. or like the bottom of a glass of milk that’s been sitting out on the table during monsoon — room temperature, a little thick, almost warm where it should’ve been cold. you don’t notice it until it’s too late, and by then it’s already curdling in your gut.

and sometimes, that goodbye returns not in your mouth but in your chest, rising like the bitter back-burn of elaichi chai left too long on the stove. the kind you forgot while doing something else. you take a sip and it hits the back of your throat with that scorched sharpness. it is still drinkable, but not comforting anymore. the milk slightly split, the tea leaves overboiled, the sugar clinging to the bottom of the cup, untouched. you hold the warmth anyway, because it reminds you of something: not of the person, but of the silence they left.

and the smell, god, the smell of something burning when your heart is breaking. it’s not firewood. it’s not incense. it’s closer to the scent of singed cloth. synthetic. slightly acrid. like you left your shirt too close to the iron and now it carries that dark, plastic tang of something permanently damaged. you don’t notice it right away. it’s subtle, almost ignorable, until it clings to your hands, your collar, the air around you. just like grief — invisible until it lingers in everything you touch.

sometimes, a goodbye tastes like silence. like licking the inside of your cheek after you’ve chewed it raw from holding back words. it tastes like salt. not ocean salt, not poetic salt, no. the kind of salt that settles on your upper lip after you’ve cried into a pillow for hours, not wiping your face because no one’s watching. the kind that crusts at the corners of your mouth when your voice breaks mid-sentence and you swallow it down before it becomes too much.

and the cruelest part? it’s in the smallest things. in the clink of a spoon against ceramic. in the heat rising from the toaster that always makes the room smell just slightly burnt. in the lingering scent of pears and vetiver from a soap they used once and never again. in the quiet “hmm?” someone hums the way they used to.

you’re not remembering a person. you’re re-living the aftertaste of losing them.

nostalgia isn’t a soft glow. it’s a sharp blade dressed in velvet. and melancholy? it’s the house i keep returning to, barefoot, even though i know it’s full of broken glass. i live there not because i want to suffer, but because it’s where i first learned to feel. where i learned to name pain and transform it into something survivable. but sometimes i forget that these feelings, too, are masks. poetic ones, sure, but masks nonetheless. they give shape to the formless ache, but they also hide me from the truth: i’m terrified of joy that doesn’t ache. of moments that don’t demand to be remembered. i don’t know how to just be without trying to archive everything as if it will vanish.

what am i without nostalgia and melancholy? maybe just someone who butters their toast without thinking about the way she used to cut hers diagonally, always too much jam, raspberry, the kind with seeds that got stuck in your teeth. maybe i’d eat without pausing mid-bite when the tea is too milky, because no one’s there to say, “add ginger next time, you always forget.” maybe breakfast would just be breakfast and not a quiet ceremony of absence. the chair across from me would just be a chair, not a museum exhibit. not the last place someone laughed before they stopped showing up. maybe the clatter of plates wouldn’t sound like grief anymore. just ceramic. just noise.

maybe i’d do laundry and simply fold the clothes while they’re still warm, without holding the sleeves up to my face hoping to smell something familiar. without wondering if the fabric remembers. the hoodie with a stretched-out collar wouldn’t make me ache. the sock missing its pair wouldn’t feel like a metaphor. maybe the smell of freshly dried cotton, sun-drenched, slightly floral from the detergent, would just be clean, not lonely. not something that once held someone’s body, someone’s scent, someone’s story. i wouldn’t hold the warmth in my hands and think, this is how closeness fades. first scent, then texture, then memory.

and without all this ache, without the tremor beneath the mundane, would i even know who i am? maybe the ache is the shape i pour myself into. maybe i only know how to feel through the imprint of what’s no longer here. and maybe, just maybe, if the ache vanished, i wouldn’t be free. i’d be unfinished. not healed, just empty. maybe i am only whole when haunted. maybe the echoes are what hold me up.

loss is never linear. it accumulates like dust. and we only ever notice it when it disturbs something still — when the light hits it just right, or when we sit down and everything is quiet. you lose a person. then another. a routine breaks. a friendship ends without a fight. the smell of wet pavement starts to remind you of someone who never came back. and then, one afternoon, the key doesn’t turn in the door quite right and you’re crying for everyone you ever lost, all at once, as if grief kept them stored together in a single drawer you didn’t mean to open. that’s why one small anomaly can break you. not because it’s tragic, but because it unlocks the whole archive. memory doesn’t sort by time. it sorts by feeling.

sometimes, when i’m walking down a street i’ve walked a hundred times, i notice a shop window that used to reflect someone else beside me. not anymore. or the old man who still sweeps the sidewalk in front of his shuttered store, his hands shaking as he flicks dust from corners that haven’t mattered in years. he doesn’t smile when he sees me. he just nods like he knows. like we’re both carrying invisible things. the smell of frying oil, the shrill ring of a cycle bell, the softness of laundry clipped to a balcony. these things make up the background music of our lives. and they hum with ghosts.

i want to say that pain has made me more compassionate. that nostalgia has taught me beauty. but if i’m honest, it’s also become a performance. a way of turning my wounds into something elegant. i describe heartbreak like poetry. i wrap grief in metaphor. i call it “missing” instead of “refusing to let go.” and i wonder: would i still have something to write about if i stopped romanticizing suffering? could i still be tender if i stopped bleeding on purpose? sometimes the suffering isn’t profound — it’s just heavy. it’s mold in the corners of your room. it’s the cup in the sink you haven’t washed. it’s the text you didn’t send. not all pain is sacred. some of it is just exhausting.

when i brush my teeth at night, sometimes i lean over the sink and just stare at the water pooling in the basin. i think about all the things that felt like they’d never end but did. school mornings. phone calls at midnight. eating mangoes on the terrace, juice dripping down our wrists. i think about someone who once kissed me and said, “you’ll remember this forever,” and i do, but not for the reasons they thought. i remember the way their hands trembled. the way their voice cracked. i remember the heat behind my eyes as i nodded. but i don’t remember the kiss. isn’t that strange? how memory chooses what to keep.

i’ve spent so long trying to preserve things. writing about them. talking to ghosts. whispering into old sweaters as if they’d answer. and maybe that’s the core of who i’ve become — someone who doesn’t let go. not because i can’t, but because letting go feels like admitting it didn’t matter enough to keep. and yet, what if all of this is just fear in beautiful language? what if my loyalty to nostalgia is just avoidance in disguise? if i peel it all back, what’s left? a quiet room. my own breath. the sound of wind rustling against the windows. is that enough?

somewhere, i want to believe there’s a version of me who walks into a room without flinching at the shadows. who doesn’t scan the walls for memory. who doesn’t pause at the door, wondering if the last person who closed it meant to never open it again. someone who can touch a doorknob without thinking about the cool metal after an argument. someone who hears a song and doesn’t brace. who doesn’t hold their breath at the first note because the second will take them under. who laughs without scanning the room for absence. who laughs and doesn’t listen for the echo of a goodbye. i want to believe there’s a life beyond longing. not cleaner, not lighter, but realer. grounded. textured.

one where joy isn’t the reward after suffering, where you don’t have to earn your softness through pain, where love doesn’t need to break you just to prove it mattered.

and yet, until then, i sit with the ache. not as punishment. not as poetry. but as practice. some days it’s as small as the moment between breaths. other days, it floods the whole room. i let it. i open the windows. i let it fill the corners. i sit with the weight of it on my lap.

i let it settle into my spine. i remind myself: even if it’s made of ghosts, even if it’s shaped like absence, this is still a life. one I’m living. one that breathes. and maybe that’s the point too, isn’t it? we forget sometimes, in our devotion to remembering, that the act of feeling it all — of trembling, of aching, of being cracked open, is what makes us human. but when we start to orbit too long in memory, when the ache becomes a religion, a ritual, a requirement, we stop living the life that’s happening. we stop noticing the tea while it’s warm, the sky when it’s blue, the hand being held right now. overdoing it breaks something. the pull of memory versus the push of the present, if we don’t find a middle ground, it begins to feel like we’re not built to live at all. just built to recall.

but i’m beginning to believe in a new version of me. not polished. not invincible. but becoming.

someone who lets people see the underbelly. someone who doesn’t apologize for feeling, but also doesn’t drown in it. someone who’s learning to be vulnerable in front of someone who is right. who doesn’t flinch at the first sign of depth, who doesn’t treat connection like a test. someone who feels deeply, yes, but doesn’t make it a spectacle. someone who knows that being emotionally fluent doesn’t mean being emotionally performative. someone who reflects back exactly what’s necessary — no less, no more. who sees you. who stays. who knows when to be soft, and when to be strong, and that the two are not opposites.

and this version of me? the one i am trying to become? he may still shake at the doorframe, he may still tear up at the sound of a piano note left hanging in the air, but he walks in anyway. he lets himself be seen. and when someone reaches for him — not out of pity, not out of obligation, but out of care, he lets them. he lets the love land. and that? that’s going to be worth it. all of it. every echo. every ache. every version of me that needed to remember in order to feel safe enough to try again.

and this is still a life. fractured, maybe. stitched together with threads of nostalgia and longing, yes. but still breathing. still unfolding. still here.

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this post is an official welcome to june. i can’t quite explain the kind of love i hold for this month, but maybe this is the closest i’ve come. after trying on too many masks, i’ve found my way back to myself, becoming who i always wanted to be. i always dreamed of doing it all, so i did. and this is a reminder that there’s still so much more ahead. to all sixteen thousand of you walking this journey with me, thank you. i love you all.

buy me a coffee

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