Content note: discussions of mental illness and suicidal ideation.
Nostalgia, per the season 1 finale of Mad Men, comes from Greek, and means “pain from an old wound.”
Or, more literally, it means “the pain of coming home.”
That’s wistful, isn’t it: is there some sort of longing that we feel for that pain, do we yearn to feel it? Nostalgia requires the crossing of some sort of emotional rubicon; beyond the days that are gone, up to the top of an aging mountain so that you can look back and see where you can never go again. It requires distance of both time and space. Homecoming requires home-leaving. And then, if the ingredients are there and well-matured, pain will bloom in you like blood around a dagger. You will ache, as the song goes, in the places where you used to play. And if you cannot go back, you will long for the pain of doing so.
Nostalgia is not an emotion for children. They are too present, too connected to the truth of everything. They can miss what is lost, experience grief and anger, but they do not yet have enough past behind them to long for it. With adulthood comes that longing for the past, the realization that things are gone. You might know how much you love something as a child, but you won’t feel how much it mattered until later.
In 2008, just after turning twenty, I moved to England for a 6-month study abroad. I was there to continue my studies in literature and take classes on Creative Writing, studying English writers and poets, reading the Romantics for the first time, including Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience:
When the voices of children are heard on the green
And whisp’rings are in the dale,
The days of my youth rise fresh in my mind,
My face turns green and pale.
In the months leading to the trip, England seemed like a golden possibility, a place where I could lounge in the shade of castles and read poetry, hop trains across the countryside to Wales or Scotland, punt through Oxford, fly to Paris, soak in the culture and sophistication of London. I saw the cliffs of Dover in my dreams, of being a windswept tweed-coated scholar, falling in love and being loved in return.
It was, of course, a shocking amount of naïveté. England was not a fantasy place, but just England, full of as may flaws as my homes in Canada and America. It was more expensive than I thought, and I had less money than I’d planned, trains were harder to book last minute than I had assumed, and the University I attended was quite ugly, in fact. I smoked too many cigarettes and could only afford to drink Strongbow cider (which, consequently, I cannot comfortably drink anymore). I learned too quickly the cocky contempt that Brits had for Americans. I made few new friends. Of course, I also did some of my best writing (at 2am in a cold, cinder-block flat, a cigarette dangling out of my mouth, ashes pooling between laptop keys), attended some good parties, appreciated my professors and fell in love with the few cultural landmarks that Norwich did have (to me, they are: the Adam and Eve pub, the Wild Man, Norwich Cathedral, and the Millennium Library). My best friend recorded the oddities and frustrations we experienced on her calendar, and still has it to this day – nearly every day in February had something scribbled in it.
I had felt the twinges of depression from my early teenage years, but here, unmoored and broke and shrouded in English rain, my mental illness roared to life. For the first time in my life, I ideated (and attempted) suicide in that little flat, a feeling I’d never truly experienced before, gripping the edge of my thin mattress with feelings rushing through my mind like greased bobsleds. Life seemed to have turned into something untenable, where I would either be drowning in gallons of sticky self-pity or experiencing manic episodes of overspending, overdoing, overworking myself. I look back at pictures of myself then and see someone nervous and gutted, even in my best moments of travel and enjoyment, I remember how painful it was to get up, to move, to coherently enjoy myself and be a good companion to the friends I was with.
It’s interesting, then, that my first experience of depression would also coincide with my first experiences of nostalgia – specifically, for EPCOT Center, one of the theme parks in Walt Disney World in Florida.
For context: I grew up in an upper-middle class home in South Florida, and my parents took me and my brother to Disney World on a pretty regular basis (we had annual passes, which were not deeply expensive at the time, and could be in the parks in less than three hours with good traffic). If you have ever lived in the suburbs of South Florida, you’ll know that, for the most part, they don’t carry a lot to feel nostalgic about – our favorite restaurants were chain locations, we shopped exclusively at Target, almost every person I went to high school with also moved away from South Florida (if not the entire state) by graduation. To what would I be returning, if I were to go back? The house I grew up in has been repainted, all the neighbors are gone. My high school was demolished and rebuilt somewhere else, the big banyan tree we would convene around before first period torn out and relocated.
Disney World, on the other hand, is designed for longing. Engineers and designers have filled the place with scents, sounds, and experiences that needle into the mind, rooting into the hippocampus. And nothing built a sturdier foundation for itself than EPCOT.
EPCOT was the second park built in Walt Disney World (opened October 2, 1982, a Libra), dedicated not to the flights of fancy and fairytales that defined the Magic Kingdom, but rather to the promise of the future (EPCOT is an acronym for “Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow”). Half of the park boasted attractions designed to teach visitors about the history of technologies (communication, agriculture, sea exploration, transportation, etc) and promote an idealistic image of their futures, those perfect tomorrows where technology would make us more connected, wiser, smarter, safer, more empathetic. As Bill Nye points out in one attraction, “If we keep using our brain power, we'll have lots of choices for the future. Maybe even unlock the power of the stars!”
This sense of optimism extends to the second half of EPCOT, World Showcase, where eleven pavilions nestle around a lagoon. Each pavilion represents one country, and though there are some attractions (two boat rides, one animatronic show, and three movies), most of the experience is a sort of broad cultural immersion. Pavilions staffed with college students from their countries, restaurants serving a sort of Americanized authenticity, shops boasting products that, for a Floridian in the 1990s, were inaccessible outside of EPCOT. We went to China for rice candy and calligraphy, practiced terrible French over patisseries, my father lived out his own Anglophilic fantasies in the Rose and Crown pub. I had hummus for the first time and learned about Venice’s Carnival, and once a year was treated to the Food and Wine festival, where dozens of additional booths would spring up around the lagoon, hawking small plates from countries around the world, introducing Americans to escargot and raclette cheese and pão de queijo.
It was all, of course, comically flawed and capitalistic: the countries around World Showcase were mostly Western, cultures were romanticized and simplified (one of my favorite questionable choices: having Aladdin characters in the Morocco pavilion, despite Aladdin being of Indian or, potentially, Chinese origin), food was overpriced and under-seasoned. In Future World, the pavilions promoting the optimistic future were sponsored by companies who benefitted from exploitation, cronyism, and monopoly (Exxon-Mobil, AT&T, General Electric).
But I grew up with it, and it ignited in me traits that I don’t regret: I am, despite the depression in my heart and the state of the world, an optimist. I fell in love with the idea of travel there, vowed to visit the real places each pavilion was based on. During the end of the millennium, EPCOT became the center of Disney’s year-end celebrations, and every offering they provided – more pavilions, parades, and fireworks – spoke to the theme of optimism, of cultural unity and global empathy, of the idea that, no matter how far apart we may seem, humanity unites all of us. EPCOT felt like hope.
Of course, I didn’t realized that at the time. I turned 13 in 2000, still green behind the ears. I took the optimism for granted, took my intense privilege of going to the parks as a given part of my experience. I let myself love it and be happy that it was in my life.
Adulthood and college crept up, and I moved away from Florida in 2005 to go to University in Vancouver, British Columbia. Shortly afterward my family moved to Portland, Oregon, and Florida was no longer a home for me to return to.
I joined Facebook in 2005, and as the community expanded, I began to join groups. One that I found was called Disney World Addicts, which – at the time – was managed by former cast members of the parks, people with the inside scoop on ride updates and closure, refurbishments, and changes to restaurant menus. I devoured all of it, rekindling a kinship with the parks, assuring myself that, if I was up-to-date on what was happening there, no matter where I was, I would still be somehow connected. It would still be a place I could understand and belong.
On a Skype call with my parents one night in England, I shared some updates with my mother. A few days later, she sent me a link to a website claiming to be a Disney Park radio, playing ride soundtracks and atmospheric music from the parks. I listened for hours. Then, one evening, I searched on YouTube for a video of Illuminations: Reflections of Earth, the firework show at EPCOT. As the pixellated sparks lit up my computer screen and the soundtrack filled my shitty little flat, my heart finally burst.
Later I would explain it as a joke – my best friend and I had a running theme of finding extremely mundane things to cling our happiness to in the desperate misery of those few months – and would laugh about it. I was watching shaky footage of parades and dark images of boat rides. I was yearning for home. I was wanting to feel the pain of going back. This, like the thoughts of death that followed me, was a new sensation. And, in a way, nostalgia kept death just on the other side of the horizon.
I’m sure there’s something deeply pitiful to this (“I know what you must be thinking. Poor little rich girl.” – Rose DeWitt Bukater). Isn’t nostalgia supposed to be for something simple and warming, like your mother’s cooking, a familiar old chair, childhood adventures? Shouldn’t I be longing for long-lost times of simplicity and happiness, not a manufactured place where the optimistic façade barely covers the corporate machine beneath?
To this day, I don’t know. I suppose that you get what you get, and this is my life. And, all things considered, it’s been a pretty lucky one.
In 2018, I learned that my company would be offering a 3-week stint of PTO to employees when they reached their 5th anniversary. By now, I was making good money, had a job that I loved, and had spent years in therapy, the horizon of my own death far away from my vision. I still yearned for Disney World, but in an abstract way; The Facebook group had turned into middle-aged mothers showing off Mickey Mouse tattoos, the radio station of park sounds seemed gauche. I would still talk to colleagues about Dole Whip, and would visit Disneyland for my 30th birthday. I joked that I could quote entire attractions, and was still a font of park trivia. My interest swerved from watching on-ride footage and fireworks to more critical analysis and history, on channels like Defunctland and Yesterworld and Park Ride History.
My plan for the 3-week hiatus, as it happens, was to go back to Europe for the first time since 2008: I would spend time in Edinburgh, London, Dover, Paris, and Provence. When asked why I chose to retread my old steps, I said that I wanted to experience them with more resources and a healthier mind. I wanted to see England as I wish I had years before, to make it up to my younger self. I booked places to stay, researched train schedules, started learning French again. I took out a loan to buy plane tickets and the best carryon luggage that I could, adding another week onto my PTO so that I would be abroad for a month.
I was scheduled to fly into London on April 1, 2020. By March 20, I had cancelled my entire trip.
It’s unlikely that anyone will come out of this year without having experienced some type of loss. After my trip was cancelled and I went into lockdown, I lost my job – then briefly regained it – before finally leaving it on Thanksgiving. I had no office to go into, and the outside world became one seen through the screens of my phone, my computer, my television. By early Spring, the nostalgia had returned, as had the aching horizon.
I don’t know, really, what brought me back. Perhaps it was the loss and fear of uncertainty that made me yearn for a place where safety is everywhere, where optimism abounds. I would go onto the Disney World website and pretend to book vacations, calculating how many thousands of dollars I would need to return (interestingly, the entire cost of my month in Europe was the same as four adults spending five days in Disney World). I turned to YouTube again, but now the historical essays were peppered with vacation guide channels, POV tours of the parks, updates about what new food would be featured at the parks and what new collectible merchandise was available – something I’d never cared about at all. When the parks closed, the channels continued. I found music again – for example, an 8-hour loop of the EPCOT entrance soundtrack – and would listen for hours. I found souvenirs from my childhood, presented slideshows about park history on Zoom calls with friends, promised to take them back with me as soon as I could. I found online shops where I could buy candles and diffuser oils and, yes, hand sanitizer that claimed to smell like the lobbies of hotels and restaurants and Spaceship Earth and the water on boat rides. I wrapped Walt Disney World’s memory around me like a thick robe, all while the parks reopened to put their employees and guests at risk of infection and death, while tens of thousands of Disney employees were laid off. I mourned, I seethed, and I yearned.
And so, I have spent 2020 explaining EPCOT and the rest of Disney World. To my friends, my family (who are supportive but not as deeply attached to the parks as I am), to myself. Why do I spend hours listening to 80s instrumental synth music, rewatching the Jeremy Irons version of Spaceship Earth, loading my diffuser with Beach Club-scented oil? Why did I name the Halloween cocktail that I brought to a cabin with friends “Regions Beyond” in a nod to the Haunted Mansion? Why is my ringtone now the climax of Reflections of Earth, and why do I still cry? What am I still longing for? Is this a bug, or a feature? And should I embrace it, or try and peel it away?
I still don’t know. I don’t feel that my love for where I grew up is the same as clemency for the many crimes and disappointments of the Disney corporation.
I changed the direction and content of this blog to reconcile and speak to my love of theme parks, and to critique their many pitfalls. But this criticism itself comes from a place of affinity, still seeing the promise and goodness of the place, still hopeful and excited for it. Maybe that’s naïve of me, and maybe that’s what I’m still nostalgic for, to be somewhere that made me happy. The question is how to appreciate the cost of that happiness and still want it.
2020 has taken a mental toll on me. I’m wracked with guilt and anxiety, fear of fucking up, getting sick or getting someone else sick, of being callous or thoughtless or judged by my peers for doing so. Suicidality has started to flirt with the edges of my mind, and though I am confident that ideation is not intent, that I will be safe from that horizon for now, it still takes strength to hold back. I’ve cried more this year than I have since I lived in England, and sometimes I feel almost as alone.
My apartment isn’t cinderblock and my mattress is quite thick, I’ve quit smoking and haven’t had Strongbow in years. And yet here I am, revisiting that 20-year old girl spiraling in a small English city, feeling her desires, wanting to give her a place to call home. If only I could sit with her on that horrible little bed and watch grainy fireworks footage with her, let her cry thick tears onto my shoulder, floating for a moment in clichés of optimism, promising to take her back, promising a new tomorrow.