like a baby bird.

on the childhood nostalgia phenomenon and my desire to age.

xxds8 on tumblr.

for someone who’s neurotic about expiration dates, i don’t really care about mine.

I know eventually I’ll reach the stage when people will never call me beautiful again. It’s almost a relief—I’ve never known how to accept compliments without flushing and shuddering in place. In a few years, someone just a little younger will assume I have a world of experience simply because I’ve turned thirty—the new middle-aged.

However, for me, aging has always held a certain allure.

I’ve often dreamed of becoming one of those elegant older women with delicate, veined arms and laugh lines etched around her eyes, smiling briefly at the younger woman on the train who dreads reaching that age.

One of the most bewitching women I know always wears Lady Million by Paco Rabanne. It’s her scent—raspberry, Amalfi lemon, jasmine, African orange flower, white honey, and amber. Sometimes, I wonder what it would be like to taste her. I go home, catch a trace of it lingering on someone else, and it’s still hers. She’ll be sixty-three and still smelling of honeyed lemon, and I’ll always remember.

It’s things like that, small certainties, that make aging feel less daunting.

As I actively age, I do my best not to mind it.

Even as I navigate lapses in recovery from my eating disorder, I’ve been doing a bit better lately. Yet, this morning, I found myself disappointed when I didn’t quite capture the coveted “morning skinny.” I should have known it wouldn’t be a good week after noticing how slim two of my coworkers looked—one pregnant, the other a few years fresh from giving birth.

On the train home—a dreadful, slow trek via the Central line—I flipped through my camera roll and stopped on a highlighted passage I had saved.

don’t lose too much weight.

stupid girls are always trying to

disappear as revenge. and you

are not stupid. you loved a man

with more hands than a parade

of beggars, and here you stand. heart

like a four-poster bed. heart like a canvas.

heart leaking something so strong

they can smell it in the street.

—Frida Kahlo to Marty McConnell by Marty McConnell.

I swear to God it fixed me.

A revelation rolled through me as I ordered a medium pizza with garlic bread for dinner. I ate five slices alone, having skipped breakfast and stumbled through a mindless lunch.

This is to say—this urge to survive, to save myself, has come only with age. And while nostalgia has become a recycled trend, that endless return to childhood, I find myself wanting to outrun who I was as a child. Yet, childhood nostalgia is no stranger to me.

valley of the dolls (1967).

Just last week, I had my final dinner with my parents. The next day, I flew out with my sister to settle into my new studio—small as a shoebox and absurdly expensive, but I've tried to make it mine. London, in moments, feels like a tumor. I was leaving to start a placement, something that felt like a turning point.

On the drive back home, my dad stopped for gas. I sat in the backseat, bathed in the late afternoon sun, feeling more like a little girl than I had in years. The gas station was old (vintage, if I let myself romanticize it), the same one that had been there when I was still stumbling around the playground at my private school.

From the pump, I watched the cars pass by, each one stirring up memories that flooded me, sweet and slow like honey sliding down my throat.

I often joke that I could be Dory from Finding Nemo with the way my memory seems to slip away, but the truth is, I remember everything—in vivid, sordid detail. As I sank into the comforting haze that follows a good meal, my mind wandered back to the familiar ache of childhood.

It came in soft, golden flashes: being picked up from school and riding home, the backroads drenched in rain, deep and dark. Bright orange leaves clung to the windshield like fanned octopus legs, and my Bambi eyes widened before slipping into half-moons as I smiled at the sight of rain clouds rolling in.

More memories came: the oversized cardigan I ordered large on purpose, half-tucked into the tight waistband of my grey and maroon plaid skirt. The yellow glow of fall afternoons, the sensation of falling asleep on Saturdays only to wake to the distant hum of a lawn mower next door—or maybe farther away. I was always disoriented, sluggish when I woke.

Fridays were the best.

They meant my dad could pick me up instead of the family I carpooled with. He was always late, but I welcomed it—the rush of checking the whiteboard for my assigned carpool number made me anxious. When he finally arrived, his sleek black car loitered alone in the empty parking lot. He’d roll in quietly, the slick black gleam of the car loitering alone in the empty parking lot. I’d slip out of after-school care and stroll to where he waited, my hair often braided back and close to my scalp.

Fridays came with jazz in the evenings, turning the fireplace on, and sitting on the sofa in my mismatched PJs. Fridays came with my dad cooking red rice and beans that he served with sautéed cabbage and diced chicken breast flavored with soy sauce and a seasoning blend that only my extended family in Canada could send us—rationed like wartime supplies.

Fridays sometimes meant I’d go straight to bed, promising to wake up after a refreshing nap, only to rise Saturday morning and linger awkwardly in the kitchen. Whoops.

My mom would stroke my hair and tell me, ‘It’s okay. You were tired. You’re an early riser. When you sleep like this, it’s because your body needs it.’

But now that I’m twenty—honestly since I was thirteen—I’ve suffered my infant death. No one tells me it’s okay anymore. People rarely touch me unless I initiate.

So, yes, I revisit those moments over and over. But when I think about it, it’s not childhood I miss. It’s the warmth. God, how I miss the warmth. I miss the time.

I don’t want to be a child again, but I long for that endless stretch of slow living, a time when I didn’t feel the weight of stress.

God, I miss being taken care of.

untitled by brett walker.

Still, I think the reason why I feel my wistfulness lies in a different bed is because I enjoy rising through the numerical ranks. Every time my mouth pops open to tell people that I’m a junior beauty analyst working and living in London, going to school in London, in my twenties I feel a sense of pride.

My program is niche and the acceptance rate is not necessarily high. I’ve done three years of the total five and some people would’ve given up by now. I chose to leave the nest—practically flung myself out of it—despite being wracked with the constant anxiety and isolation that can come with adjusting to city living.

I’m doing it and finishing it even though I know this isn’t for me. I need miles of open land and a sense of community. I hate to say it, but they were kind of on to something with the whole suburban dream back in the day.

It feels different because the trending version of childhood nostalgia consists of keywords and heavily aesthetic Instagram pages. I can’t relate to the average “kid of 2003 starting pack” meme that I occasionally scroll across.

A lot of these nostalgia posts have also intertwined themselves with the fear of getting old, physically and mentally. I come from a culture where elders are revered and cared for, so I never had an attachment to staying small.

I always felt older than I was so my childhood was less a childhood and more. . . the overall process of growing into myself that was rarely defined by how coddled or infantilized I was. A lot of the typical “firsts” that occur in those juvenile years happened later on in my life i.e. first love/heartbreak/car/international holiday. Some I’m still waiting for.

I hated being young and despite still being “little” in the grand scheme of things, I still do. So much is thrown at you. I mean there is so much pressure to stay young forever that I look forward to escaping.

Sometimes I feel that we play fast and loose with the idea of “aging gracefully” and “don’t look your age! start now!” till it warps and becomes more about selling a Lolita fantasy till you’re in the grave which makes me deeply uncomfortable.

It just seems like the noise starts fading when you’re forty and up. You laugh a little. I don’t laugh as much now.

But, yes, I do miss being taken care of.

On my first flight, I sat next to an older woman I didn’t know and while reaching for my charger I accidentally knocked against her. I apologized immediately and she smiled, letting it go. She then tapped me gently and guided my face to look out the opposite window, so that I could see the sharp pink of the dying sunset.

Without knowing, she had distracted me from the pit of anxiety that began to deepen the moment we took off.

I felt a sudden ache for my mother then.

I know since she got off the plane, maybe even after I saw the sunset and remarked on how beautiful it was, she hasn’t thought of this moment in the way have. Or maybe she has.

That feeling of being cared for rocks in and out of my life despite me caring for myself now—something I don’t necessarily resent.

I’ve always had a deep-rooted fear that I’d be one of those younger siblings who end up never doing anything because they can’t support themselves. I pictured myself rotting forever in my parents’ house and felt my throat close up, so I settled on a completely different continent and strived to feel like I could be on my own.

Maybe I’m deluding myself and this is childhood nostalgia. I’m sure there’s more nuance to this because childhood doesn’t solely encapsulate being young and small.

On a level, I do give in occasionally. Most times right before a shower, when I press a finger to the small beauty mark that lives right below my collarbones and the two on my hands.

For a moment, I see a little girl in the glass and she tilts her head as she smiles.

Well, she tells me, we haven’t done half-bad.

pinterest.