Hi Nostalgia, Have a Seat

Have you ever had that achey little feeling of wanting to belong somewhere again? Not just “be included,” but be woven into something, part of a scene, a story, a night that keeps living in everybody’s group chat and inside jokes for years.

New Year's Eve, 2003. My group of friends used to dress-up and go out for New Year's Eve every year! We always ended up at some random after party.

It was a whole different era...back in the day that is, which was usually a Friday for some reason. You show up at somebody’s house because “people are over,” and somehow it turns into a legendary night of debauchery. Someone puts on a song too loud and suddenly there’s a dance‑off in the living room, socks sliding on the floor, somebody almost eats it on the coffee table and we laugh until we can’t breathe. There’s that moment where someone does a spit take because the joke hit exactly wrong and now everyone’s doubled over and crying-laughing, trying not to choke! You wander out into the yard and end up making out with the guy you've been crushing on in a dark corner, the damp grass soaking your shoes and firelight catching on their face when you come up for air. At some point you pile into a car that absolutely has no business being that full of people just to go on a snack run. The windows down, music blasting, the whole world shrunk down to that car and those stupid jokes because that is all that mattered in the moment.

There’s also the quieter and less Instagrammable truth...everyone is tired. Not metaphorically but physically tired. Emotionally stretched. We all swear we “should get together soon,” but coordinating adults with jobs and kids is like trying to schedule a séance with twelve reluctant ghosts. Even when we do manage it, someone has to drive, someone has to be up early, someone’s kid might get sick at 2 a.m. or someone’s anxiety flares if they drink too much. The stakes of being wrecked the next day are just higher now.

And then there’s the harshest part! And that is as we get older we don’t just lose free time, we lose that automatic built‑in tribe. College, crappy jobs, early twenties apartments, late nights at the diner getting coffee and smoking way too many cigarettes...they forced us into proximity. Friends who lived down the street, a few miles away, two floors up...have moved on in life. Now everybody has their own little island. You don’t just wander into a party anymore; parties are “events” with start times and end times and Evites and maybe a charcuterie board. It can be beautiful, but it’s not the same as knowing that if you show up on a random Friday night there will be people, and music, and maybe a bonfire...and a place where you belong.

Nostalgia is cruel because it never shows you the whole picture. It edits out the drama, the loneliness, the bad hookups, the sticky floors, the ugly crying, the next-day clean-up and the parts of you that also wanted more. It leaves you with this glowy highlight reel: the fire, the laughter, the car full of friends, the way you felt inside your own skin for the only time in your life. It tricks you into thinking you used to be happier when really you were just…different. Looser. Less weighed down. Simple. Easy.

But I don’t think the longing is fake. That yearning to be “the feral friend at the bonfire” again...that my friends is real.