Endings (getting emo on main)

Can you tell I've been listening to Fall Out Boy

I’ve always been a very nostalgic person. At the risk of sounding like a millennial I’m going to reference The Office. There’s a much quoted moment from the end of the show where Andy says “I wish there was a way to know you were in the good old days before you actually left them”, and while I appreciate the sentiment I have never related. Since I was a kid I knew that I would miss things. Is it still nostalgia if it’s happening in real time? Anyway that’s the way I’ve always been so I’m used to it at this point.

I moved house when I was eight, and I took the family camera to take pictures of my room from every angle. I was so worried that I would forget what it looked like, but of course I never did.

Remy playing Little People Airplane game in her room circa 2006

I don’t know what scares me so much about forgetting, but it’s genuinely one of my biggest fears. Through schools, houses, and countries, I lack a certain stability. Memory (in theory) is constant, non-changing.

I can’t help but notice patterns in everyday life, and I find that endings come in sequence. In 2021 I got my braces off on April 29th, my eighteenth birthday was May 6th, and my high school graduation was May 13th. Three events that symbolise a coming of age happening within two weeks. It made everything feel so final, in a way I wasn’t comfortable with. I didn’t feel like I had actually reached eighteen, but luckily that’s a sentiment I have left behind as I’ve aged. I am turning twenty-one next month, and I have no qualms with it.

Anyway I’ve been thinking about that this week because it’s happening again, though admittedly not on such a large scale. On Friday (today when I’m writing this) I am finishing my internship, and on Saturday I have my second Aerial solo performance. Two things that I have been building up to, and spending a lot on time on will be over in 48 hours. Just like that. I feel like I’m standing on the precipice of the rest of my life. Something big is going to happen soon.

The other day as I was walking in the middle of a group of my friends, Guys by the 1975 started playing in my head, which it is likely to do.

[I was missing the guys/ in my rented apartment/ you would think I’d have realised/But I didn’t for quite some time]

RIP to Matty, I’m built different.

4 year old Remy at her own birthday party hanging out by the cd player

And what is my conclusion? I once again observe life through the lens of the media consume, mostly music at the minute. And as Olivia Rodrigo said “I am the girl I’ve always been”. So while I still take pictures of important places in case I forget what they look like, I am okay with how I am.

Gaiety Marketing Office

Playlist that inspired this

Man they were the golden times/They were the best of my life/The moment that you took my hand/Was the best thing that ever happened/The moment that we started the band/Was the best thing that ever happened

Take pictures in your mind of your childhood room/I just realised everything I have is someday gonna be gone

I think I feel more like myself when I’m with you

I try to capture every minute/The feeling in it

I’m the kind of person starts getting kinda nervous when I’m having the time of my life/No I’ve never been this far off the ground, and they say everything that goes up must come down

Watch the world from the sidelines had nothing to prove/’Til you came into my life gave me something to lose

And why stay if you hate it so much?/You think you’re well cool/You just write about sex and killing yourself and how you hardly ever went to school

Shut my eyes to the song that plays/Sometimes this has a hot, sweet taste