At 32 years old, I’m sitting in my big girl apartment, watching Spice World for the first time in what feels like two decades and crying.
My childhood was fine; my parents got divorced when I was 13, I moved around my neighborhood a lot and there was a lot of tumultuous things happening around me, but I was loved and cared for always. I went to a good school, always had presents under the Christmas tree, had a pool in the backyard and am still friends with the girls I met in elementary school.
My childhood was good at times and at other times, it wasn’t.
That’s why I’m not so sure why it makes me so sad when I think about it.
I get a longing for my memories and they come flooding back to me; I could see the wallpaper in my room at age 6, I know the dollhouse I had and I could envision the computer room that I accessed my first AOL screenname on.
I remember sights, smells, tastes…my memory is so vivid that my mom is sometimes shocked at how much I remember.
My first memory is at age 2 or 3…it was before my sister was born so it has to be that young. I was with my cousin who was babysitting me and my other cousin, a 1-year-old and we were dancing around the living room singing ‘Once Upon a Dream’ from Sleeping Beauty, my favorite Disney movie.
I could smell her hair gel, I see the white kitchen cabinets, and I remember the feeling of going to wake my baby cousin from her nap.
When you have a memory as good as mine, it’s hard to let them go. It’s hard to not make nostalgia your entire personality. It’s hard to not reminisce, to look back fondly on the good times and what made you happy…not when everything is in HD inside your head 25 years later.
So, I torture myself. I let myself feel and give into the waves of nostalgia. I look up the most popular toys from the 90s, hoping to find something that I once had or I look up old McDonalds menus, Burger King kid’s meal toys, awakening a memory of something I didn’t even know existed.
I search for the tv & movies I used to watch; Mary-Kate and Ashley, Allegra’s Window, Gullah Gullah Island. I look for clothes I used to have, accessories from Limited Too that I begged for, and I let the feeling wash over me like a tidal wave.
I think I know the reason for this; because I moved around so much, a lot of my childhood belongings have evaporated into thin air. I don’t like to think too much about it because it causes me physical pain, but as someone who always loved her stuff, this is hard a pill to swallow.
So, I look at photos of all the things I once owned and were important to me, willing myself to find them in some untapped corner of my aunt’s or grandma’s house.
Or maybe I do it because the world in 2025 is a lot different than it was in 1998 and I long for the simplicities of childhood. I long for the carefree (was I ever really carefree? I had anxiety at the age of 9) days where I swam with my friends in their pools, played manhunt in the summer heat, and went sledding behind our elementary school on a snowday. I miss American Girl sleepovers, the Mary-Kate and Ashley magazine, Rollercoaster Tycoon and Freddie the Fish. I miss the first edition of X-Box, Derek Jeter & the Yankees of the late 90s and screens that weren’t razor thin.
I miss when Tickle Me Elmo was the hottest toy and when all I wanted was a Barbie Jeep. I miss my biggest despair in life being Britney and Justin breaking up, or being upset that Molly, my American Girl doll, had to go to the doll hospital for a broken arm.
I miss playrooms and computer rooms, board games and sleepovers. I miss not having a cell phone, or when having a cell phone was the most intense feeling of joy I ever experienced. I miss Girl Scouts and Fridays at McDonalds.
I miss my childlike wonder of the world in front of me and I mourn the world and life that little girl thought she have.
Or maybe I’m too hard on myself and I do have the life I always dreamed of. Maybe if things worked out differently I wouldn’t be here, on a Friday night, in my big girl apartment, over the moon happy that I figured out how to watch Spice World in 2025.