Anemoia
Is there a worse feeling than being alone on New Year’s Eve?
While everyone you know spends the last day of the year with their friends and family, you are here walking along a dimly lit street. You don’t have a particular destination in mind, you’re ready to go where your feet take you. You remember that phase from your childhood when you would spend hours exploring the countryside during the summer. Nearly two decades have passed since then, a weak winter has set in and you are in a different part of the world. That curiosity – that need for exploration – is no longer extant. You’re up for adventure and exploration, but only within the confines of the places you already know. Discovering unexplored facets of what you already know has become almost second-nature to you.
There’s comfort in the familiar, you convince yourself.
The truth is, you could be anywhere, even if it’s just you. You could visit that fancy bakery you’ve always wanted to visit – maybe today’s the day you finally eat that cheesecake you’ve been recommended a thousand times. You convince yourself that the crowd there would be too much to handle, especially today on New Year’s Eve. You drop that particular plan because of the crowd. You complain about being alone on New Year’s Eve, yet you avoid the crowd. The truth is, you’re so used to being by yourself that it feels like home.
There’s comfort in the familiar, you convince yourself.
And so you walk along the sidewalk. You notice a black cat lounging on the sidewalk, bathed in the warm glow of light from the stores nearby. Its eyes glisten like – well, like cat’s eyes. A stray cat’s life isn’t too bad, you mutter to yourself. You continue walking, listening to the same songs you’ve been listening to for the past decade and change.
There’s comfort in the familiar.
You reach the neighborhood you walk to whenever it all gets too much for you. There is nothing special about this place – it is a miniature city within the city. But there’s something about this place that comforts you – you feel seen and safe, something no other place has made you feel. The sun set a long time ago, but you can imagine how serene the sunshine must have felt when it bathed this place back in the 1980s – even though you wouldn’t be born until much later. Something about the videos from that era give off that ✨v i b e✨ – gentle sunshine, a pleasant wind that you could feel through the video, a sense of optimism and growth that permeated everything. You have no connection to this neighborhood or with the era you’re ironically feeling nostalgic for – and yet, it feels familiar.
There’s comfort in the familiar.
You duck in and out of a convenience store to buy a bottle of juice. Going through the ingredients is the hip thing to do these days. You see that it’s chock-full of refined sugars – something you’ve been planning to cut down on. Oh well. You take a periodic sip as you walk along. There are benches along the sidewalk at regular intervals. You see them for what they are – artifacts of a bygone era. An era when actual effort was put into city planning, when functionality was not swept aside in the pursuit of aesthetics, an era when architecture was not hostile. You restrain yourself from ranting about it like a senile old man. On days when it all got a bit too much for you and you wanted a break, these benches held you until you were ready to wade back in. They never asked for anything in return.
The night gets darker as you sit and ponder. Eventually, you’ll rise up from the bench and make your way back to the room. You’ll have a lukewarm dinner and then sleep just past midnight. Sure, you could be out with your friends, wine and dine and have a good time of it, but those are novel experiences. As it stands, you’ll spend this night like any other night of your life.
And isn’t there comfort in the familiar?