The Illness That Is Nostalgia.

How can it be that a song I used to listen to at the age of 17 can almost promote me to my knees hunched over a toilet feeling so detrimentally nostalgic, my body mistakes it for a need to be sick. Nostalgia is an illness, I am plagued with it, just as I assume you are.

It is the year of Autumn 2024, my hair is bleached blonde, I am beginning my final year of A-levels, my friend group from the previous year are all beginning uni or taking a gap year- a friend group I soon realised were not all that great- however, my best friend lives opposite me in our boarding school dorms, so all is well. This particular boarding school was unlike any other, little to no rules (that we actually adhered to), spending most nights drunk (only to be caught once in the Spring prior), and the freedom to be ourselves- as cliche as it sounds, it truly was one of the only schools I’ve felt genuinely allowed and encouraged this.

I was always a product of music, after finally realising I wanted to go into the music industry through the forms of music journalism I began scavenging through catalogues of artists, discography after discography on an endless search for new music. New music to capture how I felt in a specific split second, new music to capture the new season, new music of all forms for everywhere and everything, this particular Autumn playlist I was beginning to curate was home to a song titled ‘August’ by a band called Flipturn. A song I only recently rediscovered- two years later. This song had such a monopoly over my mind that I felt palpably ill when I heard the first two chords again a couple of days ago. This song has carried me through the first term of year 13, had been blissfully in my ear on every walk back to the boarding house after my last lesson of the day, when the sun would be setting on our frost dusted ground, my scarf would be blowing in the crisp autumnal breeze and excitement for the evening tearing through my head. I feel as though this was the last time I truly saw the world in such a romanised way, as much as I undoubtedly adore life now and appreciate everything the real world has to offer me, the seasons I experienced in this boarding school were something out of a Jane Austen novel, while the life I lived there felt like a fever dream in the best possible way.

So when I went through several old playlists the other day, nitpicking songs for my 2026 Autumn playlist I naturally stumbled upon my old Autumn playlists and drowned in the rabbit hole of nostalgia listening to every song so carefully reminiscing on how much love I had for life, how much I miss the innocence. The innocence of my mind, of my body, inexperienced in life so my own and so in touch with herself and her own mind, I often think I will never be an interesting as I was at 17, so in love with the future and with music and her brain, so smart and in love with learning, writing essays and reading books, so intellectual and always challenged- something I now at 19 miss so dearly, something I never knew how badly I would miss until it was gone.

Nostalgia pulls at the strings of my hair, the roots of my bones and pierces my gut, so beautifully painful, when I listen to the soundtrack of my previous years I feel plagued by an irrevocable illness, the illness that is nostalgia.