Nostalgia

Old pictures are like surprise gifts - you wouldn't know what to expect (in terms of emotion) until you see them. There are so many factors influencing how you would feel - place, environment (if you are still with the old bunch of people in the picture), current personal situation, etc, that each time you look at them you would get different reactions.

This time, looking back at the pictures of the uni days, I definitely felt like I hadn't moved as far as I had wanted to go, both in terms of leaving back the memories, and also finding new grounds at the new place. For a lot of people with rich memories, ie. those that amazingly have different groups of close friends and mix equally well with all, they might not remember a particular time when they had an amazing time. For me, there is just a single stretch of time that I had the fondest memories of, and each time when I want to encourage myself when I'm feeling down, unsurprisingly my brain will bring out the pictures of those days again.

I told a friend earlier that I hadn't wanted to go back as I don't want to destroy those beautiful memories in my mind. It is evident that those people that I relate my best times with have all but moved on with their lives, forming new friendships and finding new affiliations that they relate to.

It feels like I'm back to square one compared to what I had set out to achieve initially; I had a few really close friends (or at least I thought so) back in secondary school and we always hung out together. After O levels, each one of us left for different places to further our studies, and I was sure that our bonds would not be weakened even though we'd be continents apart. I wrote emails to these people trying to find out how they were, and each time I'm left dissappointed as days passed by and no reply came in. Felt especially hurt as those people disregarded our friendship, and later on when I found out that they had no contacts with each other as well, it just saddened me further.

I realised not many people are like me, finding it hard to move on when you've had some wonderful time with certain people in your life. To be away from their lives, when we were virtually together 24 hrs a day for a period of time, just felt weird. It feels like you're losing control of something that you've had & treasured for a long time, slowly evaporating away into thin air.

I classify this symptom as 'circumstancial acquaintance', ie. people get together in a certain setting, and once they're out of that they want nothing to do with each other anymore. It doesn't happen to all the people of course, but sadly I've been at the receiving end (aka victim) of this for way too many times to be able to stay positive on this issue. Further, the real dilemma lies in whether you are ready to meet these people in the future, because the memories that are with you no longer exist in their mind, and there is no common background anymore....

I also told myself to forget about her, as she's totally out of my life now and there's little chance we could ever be together. This time when I looked at her pictures again, her smile reminded me of why I fell in love with her in the first place, and I realised I haven't gotten over her after all this time, not yet anyway...

Along the way I've met new nice gals, whom I know will be interested to go out with me if I had asked, but I had always refrained myself in the end and didn't take it further than just being normal friends. This situation reminds me of an episode of Friends season 2, when Ross was making a list comparing her then girlfriend with Rachel. He pointed out Rachel's bad points, and then when it came to the other gal, he couldn't come up with anything and only said 'because she's not Rachel' .... I relate to this not because the person I liked had any flaws, far from it, as she's perfect in my eyes. All the other gals that I've met recently are attractive young ladies as well, but as Ross puts it, they're not '*******'

Totally random last part. It just popped up in my mind as it was related to the topic, so I thought I'd better put it down before I forget everything again when I wake up tomorrow. All right time to get some shut eye or I'll be late for work tmr!