A highly sensitive person, nostalgia, rediscovering magic

As a highly sensitive person, I have always worn nostalgia like a second skin. My nature is to remember and reminisce and rip into each memory—revisiting and re-feeling, carrying a weight that’s sometimes wonderful and other times heavy.

People love the holidays for the same reasons others hate them. There are big memories, big emotions. It’s near-impossible to escape the reinforcement of all that has changed and everything that’s stayed the same.

For me, my holidays don’t look anything like they used to. Physically, I’m simply elsewhere. For example, we just had our second year of staying home alone in Milwaukee, rather than flying back to Colorado. We’re establishing our small family as our own, giving it permission to thrive and build independently.

And while I’m pretty okay with the changes in scenery and surroundings, I’ve struggled with the internal difference I feel, so deeply. Christmas used to be magical. (And it was for a long time after I stopped believing in any sort of divinity.) But for several years now, that hasn’t totally been the case.

I’ve wondered, again and again, where the spark went. Is it me? Is it my fault? Am I broken? Is a slow-spreading dullness an inevitable symptom of aging? Have I simply lost my magic?

And that’s where I’m trying catch myself, to halt the spiral.

I refuse to admit that what makes me special—the fire that heats my spirit, my simple joy, the sunshine that fuels my soul and fills my cup—could ever fade completely. If magic is something that can be lost, I think maybe it can also be found again.

So, here I am. Looking.

If I dig deep enough into the roots of my nostalgia, there are answers. I’m willing to sort through my memories like football film, to scour and rewind until I find the secret to rediscover my magic.

Maybe holiday joy had less to do with the day of the year and more to do with the feelings of harmony and good moods and the simple expressions of love and thoughtfulness and appreciation? Maybe I can find magic in the simple and subtle? Honestly, maybe all I have to do is look a little harder?

My best guess is simple. I think magic lies buried and dormant. It’s underground, hidden underneath the hard-earned layers of growth and change. From where I’m sitting, I believe losing magic is a symptom of looking up instead of in, from losing sight of the simple; especially when the big picture looms so tall.

And for me to recapture it, to lead the magic back where it belongs, I’ll have to lean into those big feelings and recognize them in real time: seeing and choosing to believe when I have a good thing, right here. Right now.

I’m a highly sensitive person, doing my best. Embracing nostalgia, rediscovering magic.