I Miss You

It's basically my catchphrase.

I had a dream last month that my best friend and I were studying at the library. But it wasn’t my university library, or the library in my city. Tucked between a little stream and the border of the woods, with high ceilings illuminated by huge lanterns and packed with rows and rows of tall bookshelves, my childhood library sits 530 miles away from where I live now. It’s been years since I even saw the place, let alone stepped foot inside. But for a night, I sat with Avis at a warm wooden desk by a huge window and watched twilight sink in over the trees outside.

Then I woke up. It felt like I had lost something.

I left Tennessee for good just over a year ago, though. I lost that library then, not now, and at the time it was a relief; the sadness of never returning to my childhood happy place was greatly outweighed by the freedom of escaping the loud, claustrophobic life I fought through in my home state. So why, when I woke up from that dream, did I miss it?

I guess you could argue that I didn’t. Maybe I missed the library, but not my hometown. I missed the walking trail and the patio and the hardwood floors, not their situation in my horrible no-good-very-bad Tennessee life. To an extent, I think this makes sense. I’m an overwhelmingly nostalgic person, and the way most cynics describe nostalgia is that it results from the cherry-picking of one’s memories— that you don’t actually miss your childhood, you miss playing with your friends at recess.

But I don’t think this is the case for me. The time to which I was jettisoned back in my dream was early high school— November and December of my freshman year, to be specific. The first big midterm I’d ever experienced was coming up; I’d never been worried about a test before. So, on non-school days, I’d be dropped off at the library in the afternoon to study. Every hour or so, I’d take a break, walking the trail that circled the place a few times before returning to my work. Then, at around six, I’d be picked up and shuttled back home to have dinner, take a shower, sleep, and repeat.

There was a lot happening in my life then. All my friends were in our high school’s band, so they tended to be busy with each other quite often. I wasn’t really bullied, per se, but the students outside of my immediate friend group just did not seem to like to me. No one is their best self as a freshman in high school. I was insufferable too. But all that meant I was a lonely kid most of the time.

So my retreat was my academic work. If I was twenty minutes away from my school with my nose in an AP study guide, then I was busy. Busy people can’t feel left out of things— or, maybe they can, but they can’t take it personally, because they’re excluded only out of necessity. That was what I told myself.

Maybe I believed it a little bit. But more likely, the feeling that no one I knew really, truly valued my presence in their lives underscored my hours-long stretches in the library. That melancholy is inextricable from my longing for the library, because it informed how I saw the library, and how I think of it still. I remember the night sky coming earlier and earlier. The bitter air outside. Desperate stars peeking through inky blue to look down at me through the window. The warm brown wood of the desk. How I had to stare at the keys on my laptop to type. I was lonely, and my surroundings reflected it.

And I miss that.

This is the common thread between times and places and people I miss: the alignment of my circumstances at the time with the scenery surrounding it. I miss the dusk walks I’d take through the woods playing Drew Monson music on repeat when I was having the worst psychological crisis of my life, because I and the forest seemed to match. I miss the sunset through my elementary school’s windows at after-school care, because the stillness of a usually buzzing place felt like how my mind operated at the time.

It doesn’t even have to be the distant past that I long for; I met one of my best friends, Kiera, this May, and she travelled away for a few weeks in early July. Right from the start, Kiera made me feel valued in a way few others ever have; perhaps not-so-coincidentally, May and June marked the start of the first good summer I’ve ever experienced. When Kiera was gone, I missed her more than I ever anticipated I would. And now with school back in session and the leaves starting to fall, I miss the dense, bright green that I noticed all those months ago.

We tend towards retrospect. There is an appeal to the narrativizing of one’s own life, however self-indulgent that is. When I miss the library from my freshman year of high school, what I’m really longing for is being only that far along in the story of my life, not yet knowing all the complexity to come, and yet reveling in the rare moments of alignment between my psychological state and my surroundings.

About this time last year, things started changing around me. I’d just come out of the worst few months of my life. I thought I’d found my place in the world. There was new music in my headphones and dead leaves all over the ground. Fairy lights, blue sky, the smell of garlic in a warm room crowded with friends— all this was hope.

I miss that time, though I know now how it ended: dead trees, power outages, a winter spent cold and tired and, above all else, alone. There was very little that remained both good and constant in my life from August to February and onwards. My grades, my shoes. My best friend.

So now I think about times like this past winter or high school midterm season, in beautiful places that echo my own lonesomeness, however navel-gazing that might be. I miss them. I play music that reminds me of them. I write poetry set within them. The longing doesn’t ever fade.

But then I think of Avis in my dream, and I know the loneliness does.

A wistful photo from a terrible era.