Nostalgia

 Preface: I tend to forget a lot about this period of my life that shaped who I am.. now that I may be more sociable, have my own developed character, my fear of rejection has greatly waned.. or asking out someone is not a huge deal anymore. We all pass through periods of good change in our lives so it's nothing special in general but these periods are indeed special to each person on the personal level. Here, I try to document and describe the best year in my life (so far, I hope) mainly so that I don't forget about it when I grow older.. the year in which I have experienced the most accelerated personal change.


Here I am.. 4 years later, with a sudden will to write. I am back with a realisation that living my life in a calculated manner, trying to avoid strong emotions for the sake of remaining focused on my goals has many benefits, but feelings of unprecedented spiritual height is not one of them. Therefore, such periods in which no event has happened that required every inch of bravery and emotion you have, no event which you hold dearly and are really proud of, may be happy and successful periods, but they offer very little material to write about. They may often be stable and productive, but the heights of emotion in these periods are not those that will inspire any form of writing.

 Today I revisit a period in my life in which I claim to have felt irrational, unexplained love for the first time. A period in which I was far away from spiritual poverty as I can be, a period of personal rennaisance following a great depression. This period was my first year in college in Hungary, immediately following years of limited self-belief and not fitting into any surrounding environment. It was certainly a strike of good fortune and mercy from my Creator to have fled the memory of all the years I have hidden my real feelings towards anyone or anything due to feeling unworthy, which ultimately resulted in heart-break and confusion.

 In Hungary, I started out completely on my own, no one knows me or my failures.. a completely blank page awaiting a drop of ink. This is when I first felt that my life, my self-image and my dreams belonged to me.. after my Creator's will.

  I remember walking 4 miles per day in the darkest of nights, thinking about all the things I need to work on to become a better person, thinking about the meaning of my life and my short and long-term dreams, going over them multiple times per day to keep myself motivated. I remember sitting down alone in the cold for hours in front of the beautifully lit main building of the university, promising myself that I would not leave any fear that I will not break. I started forcing my shy and doubtful self to socialise, to lead. I was surprised on a daily basis as to what I was capable of, and how in reality I was a worthy person after all.. perhaps.

 18th of November, 2013. My dorm-mates and I were on a weekend trip to Budapest, climbing the stairs of the Fisherman's Bastion, when my Turkish best-friend to be told me "Hey Mohamed, I heard that girl tell her friend that she liked you". That was one particular girl that I felt great admiration towards. Hell, my mind started racing like a Formula 1 car tyre. Is it real? Maybe she liked me only as a friend? All the possibilities were popping in my head like popcorn in a microwave.

 10th of January, 2014. You see, it was never going to be easy to suddenly change from a person who thinks he's not worthy to a person who was able to muster up the courage to tell a girl how he really felt, but I did it.. somehow, I wrote a letter and handed it to her. And it never mattered her response, all I remember is that after giving her the letter, I dashed down from the dorms to take a walk to the university building.. in one of the most spiritually profound hours I have lived till now. From that moment on, I became a completely new person, I rarely feared or doubted. It wasn't about telling a girl I liked her but rather believing in one's self and defying the fear of rejection, the fear that is inside everyone of us.. for the first time in my life.

 During those two months, apart from working hard on my first semester's subjects, creating new friendships that I will never forget and working on myself in many aspects.. I remember every minute detail of my internal struggle with what has remained of self-doubt in me until I was finally able to do something like that, which was at that time of my life, beyond huge. For my liking of that girl was not normal, the act itself was not normal.

  This period of my life is one that I will always cherish, I probably wrote about it more than I wrote about anything. This is nostalgia, a place or a feeling one can never return to again, triggered by one’s memory with the sudden appearance of an object or a mirroring event.

 Regarding objects, I have a good habit of collecting miscellaneous items, travel itineraries and letters from periods in my life that are close to my heart. I keep them in a box in the bottom drawer of my side-desk back home. These incoherent and seemingly meaningless objects mean the world to me, for the stories, memories and personal losses and victories that come to life the moment my eyes fall on them. Regarding mirroring events, let's hope that I will never cease to grow and break away from fear in that same manner.