Why do I miss my childhood so much?
A smell in a stairwell or a song on the radio, and your chest tightens. People call it nostalgia and usually explain it as longing for a time before worries. But children have worries too. Leo Tolstoy, in his first book, points somewhere else. Chapter XV opens with the grown narrator looking back:
"HAPPY, happy, never-returning time of childhood!"
— Leo Tolstoy, Childhood, chapter XV, translated by C. J. Hogarth
Then an ordinary evening: the boy dozes in an armchair, goes to bed, says his prayers, curls up under the blanket.
What the boy dreamed
Tolstoy describes what was in the boy's head as he fell asleep:
"They were all of them vague, but all of them full of pure love and of a sort of expectation of happiness."
— Leo Tolstoy, Childhood, chapter XV, translated by C. J. Hogarth
Nothing in those dreams had happened yet. The happiness of that evening was happiness still ahead.
What the adult misses
Maybe what you miss isn't the toys or being looked after. Maybe it's a future that felt vague and whole at once. The waiting is what's gone.
A question for now
Tolstoy doesn't say how to get that feeling back. He only names what the boy felt before sleep. The question left: what am I waiting for now, or have I stopped waiting?
Epimelea is an app built around the existential school. The conversation carries over from one meeting to the next. The archive is encrypted on the device and belongs to the person who wrote it.
About the app: an AI therapist for long-term therapy
This page is about a school of psychotherapy. It is not medical advice and not emergency help. If you are in danger right now, contact your local emergency number, or find a helpline in your country at findahelpline.com.