I don't remember

Carrie Brownstein writes, in Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl:

Nostalgia is recall without the criticism of the present day, all the good parts, memory without the pain....nostalgia asks so little of us, just to be noticed and revisited; it doesn't require the difficult task of negotiation, the heartache and uncertainty that the present does. 

I've always wondered why I remember all the difficult times with a sense of fondness; I see something good and reassuring, whereas, at the time, I felt anything but that.