The Almost-Memory
On chasing feelings that live in your body but hide from your mind
There's a feeling I get sometimes when I wake up from a dream I can't remember, not the dream itself but just the feeling that lingers like static behind my ribs, warm and itchy and achingly familiar, like I was somewhere important or with someone I've missed without knowing I was missing them, like something beautiful happened or almost happened or was about to happen but got interrupted by consciousness, and I don't know what it was but I know it mattered in that deep-down way that important things matter even when you can't explain why.
It lives in my body, not floating around in my head where thoughts go to get tangled and overthink themselves, not even in my heart where the poets would place it, but tucked into that strange overlooked corner where my upper stomach meets the back of my ribcage, slightly to the right of center, like something small and precious curled up behind my lungs for safekeeping, like the memory is breathing through me but stubbornly refusing to show its face no matter how still I lie trying to coax it out.
I think it's nostalgia, but not the Pinterest version with its carefully curated aesthetics, not the filtered photos or the mixtapes or the retro branding that's been packaged and sold back to us, but the real thing that lives in the body, the kind of nostalgia that sneaks up on you when you smell hot pavement after summer rain or hear a distant train whistle through an open window at night or catch the exact quality of light that only happens at 4:11pm in early spring when the sun hits dust particles floating in the air just so and suddenly you're seven years old again without knowing why.
It's not about remembering specific events or places or people, it's about recognizing something that's always been there beneath the surface, like the past is tapping on the glass of the present, softly, lovingly, just to say hello, just to remind you that time isn't really linear but layered, all versions of you existing simultaneously if you could just access them.
Sometimes it comes in sideways through the strangest triggers – a phrase I haven't heard since childhood, a cartoon jingle from the '90s that suddenly plays in my head complete with every note, a plastic container with that specific texture that I forgot existed until I touched it in a friend's kitchen, the smell of a book from grade two with its particular mix of paper and glue and classroom dust, the texture of dollar store socks against linoleum floors, those woven lawn chairs with aluminum frames that left red grid marks on the backs of our legs when we stood up after sitting too long in the summer.
All of it lives somewhere inside me, catalogued and preserved in some physical archive that my conscious mind can't access directly but my body remembers without effort, and when I feel it, when something triggers that recognition, it lights up that place behind my ribs like a little lamp being switched on, a low warm glow that spreads through my chest, and my lungs expand like they're about to remember something important, like I'm on the edge of understanding something fundamental about existence, and then – nothing happens, the almost-memory slips away before I can grasp it.
It's gone but not really gone because the feeling stays, that warm electric ache, and that's what I'm really after anyway, not the specific memory but the feeling it creates, the reminder that I'm connected to something larger than my current self.
That is my favorite feeling in the world, not joy with its brightness, not pride with its sharpness, not even love exactly with its depth and weight, but nostalgia with its gentle ache that somehow hurts and comforts simultaneously, that cozy electric sensation that reminds me I'm still tethered to something beyond this moment, that my body is older now but the girl I was is still in here somewhere, still watching through my eyes, still humming to herself, still touching the plastic beads in her jewelry box and believing with absolute certainty that they're real gems worth protecting.
And maybe she's the one who feels it first when these moments happen, maybe she's the one who recognizes something I've forgotten, and I just catch the afterglow, the ripple effect of her recognition moving through time to reach me where I am now.
The other week on some midnight impulse, I ordered a little Glow Worm toy off eBay, the kind you squeeze and its face lights up from inside, the kind I used to love with fierce devotion when I was small, because I read somewhere that you should buy yourself the toy you loved most as a child, that it can heal something, and now it sits on my shelf catching light during the day and sometimes I squeeze it in the dark just to see its face illuminate, and every time I see it I smile not just with my mouth but throughout my whole body, like something important just happened or almost did, like a message was delivered even if I can't quite translate it.