#22 - Deeply Treasured Memory - 25/07/2025
Today was quite the experience. Not bad at all, actually, just a LOT that happened. I was in work, of course, but i had a lot going on after it. After a day of mainly not getting progress yet not being too sad because of it, i met up with my sister and her boyfriend and we went to visit a trading card game store. It had been the first time that id seen her and him in what felt like a month or two.
To say that I was overjoyed at all of it is an understatement.
I legitimately loved my time there! Not only are me and my sister and her partner huge fans of yugioh, especially 5DS as its such a good anime and a really damn fun and engaging time, but being able to actually be in an environment like this that felt so comfortingly familiar and chill was just so nice. I've been working for about three, nearing four weeks now, and before that I barely had any time or motivation or interest to go to these places as I was broke. Trading card stores are so unfamiliar, yet the vibe in the one me, my sister and her boyfriend visited was just so damn comfy. Believe it or not, despite having played yugioh in the past and not being that good at it, I've never had an actual deck of my own. So can you imagine just how...good it felt to be able to go through a giant box of cards and create my own? It felt so nice! And I just found myself investing more and more of myself into this, more and more excitement coming out of me. I felt so...at home. It wasnt overwhelming, it wasnt overstimulating, it was perfect.
And ultimately I walked out of there with what must be around 100 or so cards. The owners of the place were just lovely too.
After that we pretty much went to mcdonalds at around nearing 12 at night, where we pretty much had a damn feast. The Big Arch is such a damn good meal deal, legitimately had me stuffed. But the burger, good lord they made it so fucking delicious. Legitimately love me a burger that's got a good patty, great cheese, sauce, lettuce, dill pickles, etc. Same with huge fries~ But eating that late, sipping my cola in the car ride back, was nice~
Something that stuck out to me was the ride back, actually. Riding in a car across a near empty motorway where its just the darkness of the night and faint streetlights, the hum of the car and the chitter chatter of the front seats...it's so nostalgic. Deeply nostalgic. And I realised why: because it reminds me so deeply of my childhood, so deeply of that older time. When was the last day in which I really felt so free, so at calm? See, i've recently drank the previous weekend, I had a combination of irn bru and smirnoff which made me tipsy enough to not be able to walk and end up sleeping like a rock, but that drunkness makes me feel tranquil in a way that's so unusual for me usuallly. On work, I tend to be calm in a way that's not really TRULY calm, just more like appropriately relaxed given the work. But when am i TRULY, ACTUALLY calm? Basically, on these kind of situations like today with yugioh and mcdonalds and with my sis and her boyfriend, going home across that highway, was pure relaxation for me, pure calm.
The ride back was deeply nostalgic. Lying back in the car, head tilted to see the darkening sky, the road ahead illuminated by streetlights, how quiet the road really was. The hum of the vehicle, the cola from mcdonalds in my hands, my sister and her boyfriend talking, it all felt so deeply familiar in a way. As a child, I remember a specific memory: a friday or saturday night, my dad taking me out to the nearest tesco and the pair of us walking down the empty aisles of the supermarket. That hum of the overhead lights, frigid temperature prickling at my oversized jumper, heart thudding from how cool it felt to be out so late as if i was doing something naughty and being a big boy/grown up, being able to choose a tin of pokemon cards to add to my half-bootlegged collection that my parents managed to snag. I still remember that night, it was one of the few times that I really had such a rare moment of treating myself or being treated when it came to this sort of thing. This isnt to say we had nothing, but its not like a poor family can suddenly do things to make itself better if its stuck in the pits. Today reminded me of that night, but stripped it of all the baggage that comes with. It may be silly, but I felt like a kid again for just a brief moment. Mind, I dont want to ever be a kid again and no way in hell do I ever want to go back. I have no desire to relive an era of my life that is deeply horrible in retrospect, but the innocence of such a thing and such a time is what came through today. Just for a bit, its nice to feel like im innocent, like im a very simple person in a large world. To have childhood innocence again after a long time.
Even the fact that Yugioh 5Ds is something me and my big sis watched not too long ago, that she was able to share a piece of her life with me, that I could see it and love it too, feels like a genuine evolution of who we are and what we endured to get to this point. We've lived long enough to talk about all of this, survival. 5Ds being the catalyst to get us back into yugioh to some greater extents from our own individual perspectives means everything. For her, it was deeply important when she was growing up. For me, this was closure to curiosity planted over a decade plus ago, and yet we both deeply enjoyed it. I can't express enough how damn good 5Ds is, to have this anime about people in rough situations using their hope and bond and dreams for a better tomorrow and to go against the toxic norm. It resonates. Still does. Beautifully interesting story too.
In a lot of ways, I felt beautifully small. A small little piece in a greater world, a microcosm. But what a comfy end to the day.
Nostalgia feels like a warm blanket.