I miss when I liked the future

Of all the things I'm supposed to feel nostalgic about, I don't actually miss a single one.

Road trips with my parents, me and my sister fighting over what music to put on for the comfortable ten hours in the car, my mum sulking before we even left and saying «I'm not coming with you lot» and then sleeping the whole way. My dad driving in silence, thinking about how to get rid of her. Years of separations, divorces, fights, illnesses, breakdowns, betrayals followed. My dad found a way. Never another trip all together.

At my grandmother's I drank from the same yellow plastic cup for thirty-eight years. Always that one, ever since I was too small for the glass ones. I'd find it on the table whenever I went to visit. We talked — that is, she talked, I tried to talk to her and she ignored me, always irritated by the world. The fireplace smoke made me sick, I'd open the windows and she'd roll her eyes: «All this fuss over a bit of smoke». Then she'd throw food scraps, plastic wrappers, cutlery, the remote control into the fireplace-chimney. But never my cup.

Now she's in a care home, convinced she's immortal, and she's always happy to see me. Every now and then she says «ok, that's enough, I'm tired of this, pay up and take me home», as if she'd just sat down for a moment's rest in the wheelchair. I tell her «yes, soon», and she forgets.

I have no nostalgia for Panini sticker albums — never collected anything — for Pikachu — never watched it — for football — never played. It's a source of embarrassment every time my eight-year-old nephew wants to play. Worse than when he beats me at logic puzzles. I only did swimming because my dad took me, and I was happy because you did it alone, underwater.

I don't remember a single episode of Dawson's Creek, even though I watched it. The real turning point, in that provincial little town where I grew up, was when the internet arrived, I connected to a world of people like me and started feeling less alone.

So posts about how wonderful school was, diaries, the Nineties — none of that works on me, because I didn't have a real social life at school. I wasn't one of the ones who got laid. And yet nothing makes me feel more left out than seeing someone younger than me pine for an era they weren't even born in. Apparently they had a better time of it than I did.

We are the most nostalgic generation ever. Are we? I wouldn't even know how you'd measure that. What I know is that the moment I open my phone someone wants to make me remember something. A snack bar, a cartoon theme song, bigger ice creams, the payphone. I must have had a wonderful childhood, judging by how insistent they are.

On my list of non-negotiables I'd put air conditioning, being able to get on a plane and travel without being rich, carrying the world's music in my pocket, the books I want, the films I like. Should I miss the days of downloading porn by the megabyte? The internet was a good place to be a teenager, before webcams or a camera on your phone. I met people who shared my interests, slept in tents, on floors, saw unlikely gigs, met people who would stay with me for decades.

There is one thing, though, for which I feel an extreme nostalgia. Every time I see C. I say: «Do you remember 2019?».

2019. What a year.

First of all I was slim and younger, which seems like the right place to start. I may have matured, but my trousers fitted better. I could still get into them, in fact. Let's skip the part where we tell ourselves it's great to have grown up, that we're more self-aware, more intelligent, more mature, and pretend we're not being superficial. From here on it can only get worse.

That year I wasn't working much. If I close my eyes I can see me and C. going for brunch at the Four Seasons. We'd arrive in my battered, filthy Polo, papered inside with a layer of receipts and loose sheets, and let the Rolls-Royces go first. I didn't earn much, but on brunch I kept to C.'s standards. I was happy. And thinking back on it now, I'm happy. So this is what everyone else feels when they see Sailor Moon or a Tamagotchi.

C. barely eats a thing, he's the most nostalgic person I know, and he has a great sense of humour. So even when I behave like a complete arsehole, he finds a way to make it funny. At that brunch there was a man with a limp who kept passing our table (it was a buffet, there was nothing wrong with that), but for some reason I noticed him every time he went by, and for some reason, while I was stuffing my face, he bothered me enormously. I said, obviously, the thing I will deny having said — that he was bad luck rolling our way and was going to bring us a ton of misfortune. And C., every time he sees someone with a crutch, says to me: omen!

2020 hadn't happened yet. C. hadn't yet found out he had a tumour. I hadn't yet had to pick my grandmother up off the floor from her own mess. We were standing on the edge of a cliff and we didn't know it. I had plans and I took it for granted that I could carry them out. Even the stupid ones. Especially the stupid ones.

Every now and then someone pops up writing about wanting to go back to 2019, and I want to tell them I understand. The time that came after feels somehow ruined to me, as if a part of me got lost in it. I find myself calling it the last normal year.

In 2019 the future worried me less. Now I expect a robot with a crutch to trip over a cable and set off all the nuclear bombs.

In 2019 the future worried me less. Now I expect a robot with a crutch to trip over a cable and set off all the nuclear bombs.

I miss being able to waste time thinking I had time. I miss not being afraid.

I don't drink from that yellow cup anymore. It's more hygienic too.