I was in the grocery store today and saw a specific brand of soda I had not seen since 2019. It was not even my favorite, but seeing it triggered this sudden, intense wave of something. It wasn't quite nostalgia. It was heavier. A sense of grief for a world that just quietly vanished.
It is not about the big, obvious things. It is the tiny, mundane stuff:
The specific sound of a crowded food court at lunch. The feeling of not thinking twice about handing cash to a cashier. The way you could just spontaneously decide to go to a movie. The specific brand of soda at the grocery store. It feels like we all lived through a collective trauma, then just agreed to never talk about it and pretend everything is normal now. But sometimes these little things pop up and remind you that the normal we have now is different, and the before times are just gone.
It is not that I am unhappy now. It is just a strange, quiet sense of loss for a world that does not exist anymore. Does anyone else get this?
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