I have a bitter nostalgia for things I never experienced, or experienced very rarely. Zellers and Future Shop are gone forever, and I hold this low-level bitter resentment of the fact that I'll never be able to truly experience them. I only knew them as a small child being rushed through and not allowed to really experience them, and even then, those rushed moments could be counted on a single hand. It sounds ridiculous because they're just retail stores. Just capitalist icons. There's nothing special about them. Sure, Zellers had a restaurant that I never got to try, but did I really miss out on anything by never being able to take my time, eat there, maybe buy a TV at Future Shop, and so on? You could easily argue no, but it still feels like I missed out on a generational experience that I shouldn't have, and that I'll never be able to experience now.
I have this with a lot of things that I noticed in passing in my youth, things that I told myself I'd one day get to experience on my terms. If I couldn't do it as a child, I'd at least do it as an adult one day. I suppose I'm bitter that time exists, and that things don't stay the same. There is very little on that list that I could go experience today, even if I were financially or physically capable. A specific Zehrs in Ontario, now torn down. Certain attractions in Niagara Falls, now replaced. Certain people to get to know, now dead or long moved on. A certain feeling, now permanently incapable of being felt. A certain environment, now forever changed by the simple virtue of humans and places being dynamic.
I don't know how to accept it. I recognize, logically, that I have no choice but to. But emotionally it seems an insurmountable hill. These were the things that kept me going as a child, and now as an adult, now as a functional cripple, the list of things I can do and want to do is nearly blank. The nostalgia is no longer tenable, and there's nothing new that inspires my fancy. I think of experiences I sought after and enjoyed over the past six years and almost nothing comes to mind.
I died years ago but my body has failed to catch up.
.
I bounded out of my waterbed to shelter under my doorjamb.
I could see into my living room where I had a 3-shelf bookcase bolted to the wall. My paperbacks did a lemming-like cascade off their shelves and across the floor.
