a 17-year-old’s inner thoughts

Since I’ve started my senior year, I’ve been thinking a lot about the term “future nostalgia”. I first heard it when Dua Lipa came out with her album with that same title in March of 2020. To be honest, I didn’t even really listen to the album at all unless it was on the radio and I didn’t so much as give the title a second thought.

Until now.

To me, future nostalgia has many meanings. My interpretation is this: Future Nostalgia is the act of missing something while you still have it. In other words, missing a memory you’re going to have before it even happens.

This yearning to get back a moment in time before the moment even occurs is not only an incredibly nuanced feeling, but it’s also the definition of what I believe senior year to be.

I’m sure that anyone can relate to the idea of future nostalgia, no matter if you’re a senior or not. But I wanted to share my point of view as I begin the last year of my childhood.

Senior year, although I’ve only just started mine, is extremely bittersweet. On one hand, I’m excited to begin a new life when I graduate high school and move away from my hometown. I’m jittery but hopeful because I know that I have so much life ahead of me. I’m also unexplainably sad because I know I’m going to have to leave my friends and family, just like I’ve seen my friends and family leave me.

I think everyone (all of my fellow seniors) know this complexity of emotion to be true, so people often place big emphasis on making memories and soaking up the precious time we have with each other before the hourglass runs empty on one end. There are countless “senior” events like dances, senior sunrise, the last first day, and every other last up until the last time we see each other, all together, again.

These events are all created on the basis of nostalgia; we should make all the memories we can and capture every second we have together because we’ll want to look back and smile at them someday when we’re grown up. But as each day passes, I’ve grown to realize that somehow, I already miss this part of my life.

I miss seeing my friends in the hallways every day, even though I’m writing this in English class right now and I’ll see them again in 30 minutes when I have to go to my next class. I miss driving around at night and blasting music because there’s very little that compares to scream-singing with a fresh license and your best friend in the passenger seat. I miss going on walks and counting the number of people from school I see as I make my way through the streets I grew up on; I’m still growing up and those same streets are still my home.

What I’m getting at is that I haven’t lived my whole senior year yet. It’s literally only September. However, I’ve grown oddly appreciative of every little thing in my life because even now, I feel them slowly slipping away.

Another reason I’m so inspired right now to write this, is because this is the last time I can ever say, “I’m a dancer,” ever again.

I know that I’ll always be a dancer; it’s not something that you can ever leave behind, especially not after 16 years. Dance has always been not only a part of me, but the most of me. It was my identity when I was little, and even if it’s not my whole world now, I can confidently say I’ve built my life around dance. I think I complain about dance a lot, and those who don’t really know me might think I hate it because I’m constantly saying, “my back hurts” and “I can’t go to dance right now, I’m tired”. I complain about dance in the way that a parent might complain about their kid; I love it so much that it’s okay for me to dislike it sometimes.

I could never hate dance, and I haven’t quite comprehended the fact that one day I’ll take my last class, perform for the last time, and even put pointe shoes on for the last time. I already feel like I miss being a dancer, because I’ve realized how quickly it’s all going to be over.

I think that’s the whole reason I’m feeling all this so early in my senior year. It’s hitting me how quickly everything is going to end. That doesn’t mean that new things won’t begin, because they will. It just means that before, senior year was like a myth, or a day that would never come but you always heard about. Now, it’s my reality.

People often say that nostalgia will be the death of them. I agree, but I also think this overwhelming feeling of future nostalgia and missing my life before I’ve left it, is forcing me to be grateful for everything I have and happy about everything I’ve come from.

It’s so silly to say I just realized this, but when people say, “miss you already,” before you’ve even left, they really must mean it.