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So spotify said I am 69 years old.
Interesting.
After watching Bohemian Rhapsody I fell in love with Queen. That love burned deep and slowly grew into a full blown obsession with 70s and 80s music. ABBA. Billy Joel. The Police. Phil Collins. And of course the king of pop Michael Jackson. Listening to all of it made me feel nostalgia. Nostalgia for a period I never existed in.

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Truly, sometimes I think I was born in the wrong era.

Since my imagination is free, I asked myself: if I were actually born in 1956, what would my life look like?

I'd probably have grandkids by now for sure.
As an Igbo woman born in 1956, If I were born poor I'd have attended a local primary school in my village. At eleven I would have been forced into hiding because of the Nigerian civil war.

If I survived the starvation that came with the war, I would probably be married six years later to a man a decade older than me. Love wouldn't be an option, it would be a luxury I couldn't afford.

If I were fortunate I might finish my secondary school. If I were VERY fortunate my husband might sponsor me through university and his surname would be on my certificate (a silent mark of ownership).

I might be forced to learn that marriage is not only about "good times."

I would be required to keep bearing children until JUNIOR arrives to carry on his father's name and inherit his property.

There would be food I was forbidden to eat, (like the gizzard of a fowl), unspoken rules I learned to never question, desires I will never live to fulfil.

Now I believe Taylor Swift.
Nostalgia is indeed a mind's trick.

Nostalgia, edits, softens, and skips the pain, lack of option and unfufilled desires and leaves you with ABBA’s dancing queen and Michael Jackson’s human nature and shows you colours that only beautiful music heard for the first time can show you.
If I were truly born in my Spotify era, I probably would have hated it.
Now, I think my nostalgia stems from the illusion that life made more sense back then than it does now.
Maybe it did.
Maybe it didn’t.
I’ll never know.