language fail

As M2 and I were discussing recently, there's no term in the English language for "bad nostalgia." If nostalgia is the triggering of pleasant memories of the past which leads to a kind of wistful longing, then what do we call the triggering of sad or stressful memories of the past which leads to melancholy? There's no word for that. The closest thing I can think of is a flashback, but that's a more violent, immediate, and traumatic experience than what I mean.

What brought that up? Oh, M2 was asking how D is doing, and I said, apart from the new physical problem that's going to probably add yet another drug to the pillbox, quite well. M2--who in her life before massage school was, for quite a long time, a psych nurse and thus really knowledgeable about and tuned in to such things--said she knew he must be doing very well, because with what he's been through in the last year and a half (having to see his reputedly dying father comatose in the ICU, having said father promise to come back into his life and then reneging, finding his grandfather dead on the floor and having to call 911 and perform CPR, not to mention the death of his cat) it's remarkable that he hasn't decompensated and relapsed. Especially since he's lost so much of his support services--Cougar L, the visiting nurses.

And I said that it was now five years since that summer of the long, horrific, life-altering and life-saving hospital stay, and that the anniversary of his admission (i.e. the Monday after Mother's Day) had come and gone before I even actually realized it. That's how *I* know he's doing really well. This is the first year that I didn't have "bad nostalgia" before and on that anniversary. No horrible sadness and painful memories bubbling at the edges of my consciousness for days or weeks. Of course, I still am capable of that bad nostalgia when I think about it, but the immediacy of it, the all-encompassing power of those memories is blunted. And it's because, in large part, that I no longer fear the worst. I don't foresee a life of in-and-out-of-the-hospital, crisis after crisis, terrible mental pain, and ultimate suicide. No, my child's life will never be what it should have been, but I see, little by little, in tiny increments--and, sometimes, like in the man who called 911 and performed CPR on his grandfather, huge leaps--him coming back to himself.

Okay. In other news, I am going to kill "Justin" and you will probably see me on the news. On the one hand, I hear they have nice gyms in prison; on the other, they probably don't feed the inmates enough protein. So, y'know, when I do snap, I hope some of you will visit me and bring Muscle Milk (banana flavored, please).

xoxo