This Stubborn Nostalgia

Image Credit: Liz Enochs

Content note: mentions of intimate partner violence, sexual assault, religious trauma, and war.

A while ago, a longtime friend recounted a snippet from one of our childhood sleepovers in which we role-played as interrogator and detainee. “I have no memory of that, but I believe you,” I laughed.

The scene: my dark bedroom, walls covered in “Lord of the Rings” posters and yellow daisies; the “enhanced interrogation technique”: drip water torture. We were probably taking a break from playing Donkey Kong Country on Super Nintendo, and I’d bet we were giggling. Thankfully, my mom found us and put a stop to the whole thing pretty quickly. Still, “Childhood under George W. Bush’s administration was a trip,” we agreed.

I was 11 years old when 9/11 happened. In the same basement that successfully shielded me and my family from countless tornadoes, I watched the second plane hit the World Trade Center. I remember the enormous plume of smoke and ash, and I remember not knowing how to process the images my TV was showing me.

It was the same TV on which I’d watched “Home Alone 2,” “Newsies,” and “Sleepless in Seattle.” It was the same TV on which I watched the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade every November. Although I’d later live there for a time, at that point in my young life, I’d only ever visited New York City through TV shows and movies. Hell, I’d barely been east of the Mississippi river. As a home schooled kid from a blue collar, conservative, Christian family in the rural Bible Belt, my world was very small.

These days, I tutor college kids who weren’t even born yet when 9/11 happened. They say things like, “it was your generation’s Vietnam,” about the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. They refer to Nirvana and Weezer as “classic rock.”

They wear tattoo choker necklaces and flare jeans and platform sneakers. They know who Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera are, but I have to explain dial-up internet to them. Most of them were toddlers when I was a college freshman — their eyes widen when I reminisce about handing over hard copies of my term papers. They tell me I’m crazy when I confess my yearning for landlines and flip phones. They laugh when my answer to, “Why are you tired?” is some variation of, “I’m in my 30s; I’m always tired.”

Despite their love for social media and smartphones, when I talk about growing up in the 1990s and the 2000s, they smile and say things like: “That sounds fun,” seemingly without a trace of sarcasm. Their obsession with the era brings me joy — because while my childhood wasn’t trauma-free, and in many ways the world has changed for the better since I was a kid — sometimes I long for those days.

I’ve been marinating in nostalgia for a few years now. I’ve been writing about it, too, and I think I know why. It’s not just about the resurgence of 90s and Y2K fashions, although that helps. It’s not simply that I’m in my 30s and surrounded by young nieces and nephews, their childhoods inadvertently holding up a mirror to my own. I’m sure nearly dying at 29 and then moving back home to southeast Missouri has something to do with it; the Covid-19 pandemic might have played a role as well — but those events alone aren’t to blame.

A great deal of my nostalgia stems from strict, evangelical Christian parenting. MTV was forbidden fruit — I hid a Hanson poster and a Mariah Carey cassette tape under my bed. I wasn’t allowed to watch “Hocus Pocus” or “Buffy The Vampire Slayer” or “Friends.” Any celebrity gossip or pop culture news I managed to absorb growing up was largely thanks to Walmart’s magazine aisle, my favorite place to camp out while my mom shopped.

When I wasn’t wearing my siblings’ and cousins’ hand-me-downs, I was wearing “modest” clothes — no crop tops with low-rise jeans, no bikinis, nothing form-fitting. As an adult, I’ve certainly felt compelled to make up for lost time — and boy, have I — but that doesn’t fully explain my fixation, either.

I don’t love that I’m living in The Gilded Age 2.0, but worrying about money is as natural to me as breathing. The normality of mass shootings in the U.S. is upsetting, to put it mildly; some of the recent advancements in AI terrify me, and I can’t help worrying about the climate crisis and the increase in global conflict as well as rising totalitarianism — but I grew up fearing an Antichrist’s ascent to power.

I spent years of my childhood waiting for the world to end in fire and blood. Young Lizzy was encouraged to expect rapture and embrace martyrdom — she didn’t take coming of age for granted, much less did she expect to live a long life — so my tolerance for existential dread isn’t low. No, it’s both simpler and more complex than all of that.

More than anything, I think I’m mired in nostalgia because my life got way too serious way too soon, and I’ve spent most of my adulthood fighting to survive — both literally and financially.

It’s not like bad things didn’t happen to me when I was a kid — religious trauma, pervert relatives, handsy bosses, aggressive boys, and mean girls did their damage — but any remnant of innocence I managed to carry into young adulthood was taken from me in my 20s, and I think cocooning in nostalgia might be how my brain is trying to find a way back to a “simpler” time; or, at the very least, a “simpler” time for my nervous system.

But there’s no going back, and I know that. I’m grieving as much as I’m appreciating, and I know that, too — but I can’t seem to stop.

And maybe that’s OK. Maybe this stubborn nostalgia of mine was born from trauma; maybe it’s just a phase that has to run its course. Regardless, I’m along for the ride, and it’s not a bad ride to be on.

“You don’t use Facebook, TikTok? What about streaming?”

“I’m not on social media, and I have a DVD player. I used to work from home, but I don’t anymore.”

I canceled my internet service a while back, primarily to save money, and the conversation with my provider’s customer service representative went something like the one detailed above. It’s all true — I lost a remote staff writing job in 2019, then another one in 2020. I deactivated Facebook in 2017, and I deleted my Instagram, Snapchat, LinkedIn, Tumblr, and Reddit accounts in 2022. I tried TikTok in 2024, and I deleted it a few months later.

The overturning of Roe v. Wade left me feeling desperate to protect my privacy in any way possible, and that feeling remains with me two years after the ruling. When people ask me if I miss social media, “Not at all,” is usually followed by, “It feels like the 90s in the best way.” So far, I’m feeling the same way about not having internet access at home.

As a tutor, I work a set schedule, but the overall setup of my job is rather relaxed — I typically don’t arrange appointments unless students need virtual tutoring. For on-campus tutoring, it’s a first-come, first-served situation, and I have the freedom to watch documentaries and video essays on my computer while I’m waiting for students to show up. It’s a perk of my job that I take full advantage of. I keep it pretty educational: mostly PBS, personal finance, and pop culture criticism.

Over the last few years, I’ve consumed documentary after documentary dissecting the ugly side of the 90s and 00s — heroin chic, the rampant shaming of young women in media, the abuse of child stars, post-9/11 Christian nationalist fervor, Abu Ghraib, the row of dominoes that brought Americans Alex Jones, then Sarah Palin, then unfortunately a Donald Trump presidency, etc. I’ve learned so much more about the American occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan than I ever could have — or would have wanted to — when it was flooding TV screens and filling newspapers. Even so, I can’t shake this longing for a “simpler” time.

“I accomplished a personal triumph over the weekend. I finally finished all seven seasons of ‘Sabrina The Teenage Witch,’” I told some of my friends in 2023.

“Melissa Joan Hart was a big deal,” They laughed.

That particular friend group is comprised of older millennials. We’re all queer. We all grew up worrying about money. We all grew up in the Lower Mississippi Delta region, where Old Time Religion and superstition reign supreme — so we’re all experiencing delayed adolescence. We’re all nostalgic. But I think it might be different for me — it’s more than a conversation starter; it’s more than a hobby. It’s not just about reclaiming my childhood as an adult; it’s not only about re-parenting myself.

“I had a bad relationship when I was 13; I think he ruined me,” one of my freshman students told me recently. “I used to have nightmares about him.”

“I can relate. I still have nightmares about my ex-boyfriend, and it’s been almost ten years since we were together. Sometimes I feel ruined, too, but I’m sorry it happened to you when you were so young,” I replied.

There’s a scene in “Friends” where Mike’s girlfriend, Precious, slaps him in the face for cheating on her with Phoebe. Mike says nothing — and does nothing — in response. He takes the hit and lets her walk out the door. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to feel unfazed by that scene, because I’ve never assumed I could hit a man and he wouldn’t hit me back.

There’s a scene in “Gilmore Girls” where, after a few repeats of, “Jess, wait,” and one gentle push, Rory deters her boyfriend from raping her. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to watch that scene with stoicism either. I could say the same thing about watching Patrick catch a drunk-dancing Kat in “10 Things I Hate About You” before escorting her to a secluded swing set. There’s a moment where it seems they might kiss, but they don’t. She vomits, and he takes care of her.

When HBO aired episode eight of season one of “The Last of Us,” I re-watched Ellie escaping from David and hugging Joel over and over. As intense as those scenes are, there’s a catharsis in witnessing a character fight back and win where you fawned, froze, or — in your own way — fought back and lost; there’s catharsis in witnessing a character find comfort and safety only moments after surviving something horrible when you, too, survived something horrible, and there was no one around to comfort you.

Of course, surviving the horrible thing — or things — never ends. Ellie shows us that in episode nine. She’s quiet, withdrawn. Joel helps her find moments of joy, but she’s not the girl she used to be, and he can’t fix it or undo it. She can’t either.

“I spent a long time trying to go back to who I was before, but I can’t. That girl is dead,” I recently told my parents. We were talking about abuse, specifically intimate partner violence, and I was in a sharing mood. “At some point, I realized I had to become someone new.”

Since I canceled my internet service, I’ve been borrowing movies and TV series from my local library. I try to mix up my selection somewhat — recently, I borrowed “The Girl from Missouri” and “Beaches;” they’re both films I’ve never seen, and they were both released before I was born.

But I borrowed season three of “Friends” also, even though I practically have it memorized. I have a hold on “Gilmore Girls” season one; when it arrives at my local library, I’ll be checking out seasons one through seven even though I can quote the series word for word. I just added season one of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” to my holds — my library has seasons two through seven on its shelves — so I’ll be checking out that entire series soon, too, and it won’t be my first time watching it.

Nor, it seems, will it be my last.