The way people conflate memories and the senses has fascinated me for a long time now. Scent memory is a particularly tricksy witch. Much like a good fart, she can be silent but deadly. She’ll sneak up on you when you least expect her, stab you with some sudden aroma—wintery pine wood, lavender soap, that scent you can never exactly place but you know specifically belongs to that one person’s family—and drag your buried, unconscious memories to the forefront of your mind.
In my experience, scent memories tend to be painful ones, often followed by tears. So many tears, rapid and endless, spilling from my face with such force that I could turn them into a tsunami sea. I’ve always had lots to cry about.
For example, the mixed scent of Monster Energy and weed always reminds me of Warped Tour, which then reminds me of the one year at the show when I got dumped by my high school boyfriend. Now, whenever I smell those things together, I get flashbanged by his big, stupid smile. But the pain of that memory isn’t that the guy dumped me. It was my first real encounter with rejection. I had something I thought was beautiful, but it was ripped away from me, and there was nothing I could do about it.
That’s when so many brilliant ideas planted themselves in my mind. “What if I’m not good enough? Do people actually hate me? What’s the point of forging new bonds if they might decide to just get rid of me anyway? I’m not doing that again.”
Nostalgia has its moments. But nine times out of ten, it straight up sucks. Better off without.