“God, I wish you could’ve been there.” Here, Holden could have finished his story, but he continues up to the present day before offering a solemn piece of advice to his audience: “don’t ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.” The shreds of happiness we see from Holden mirror these two chapter-ending quotes. When happiness would otherwise come  to him he ignores it or shuts it off and dismisses it before he can really let any joy affect his heavily-guarded negative psyche. We see him at his most ecstatic when he watches Phoebe on the carousel, wishing his audience could have been present in this moment of happiness. Similarly, early on in the novel Holden remarks that he wishes we could have met his brother Allie. Holden is torn apart between what these quotes embody; on one hand he gets caught up in the laughter and beauty of moments in the past while on the other he resents the past for not continuing to or resembling the future. Thus he ruminates: stewing his simmering disregard and distaste for moments he misses or those which make him jealous of another’s joy and abandon.

It’s not really that Holden believes himself when he cautions the audience to not tell people about the past. It’s just something that he himself cannot confront without immense pain. It’s a failed reconciliation. The past which simultaneously disgusts him and imbues him with nostalgia is full of events with which he cannot come to terms. His pain is just too great when he looks back on his semi-hidden memories of abuse and loss. That said, Holden is not so stuck as he believes. Resentment and self-hate are simply sticky roadblocks in his path to recovery, not fallen bridges or finite roads. With time he can find joy in the present again, even through all the pain of his past. Rather than wishing you “could’ve been” somewhere, he’ll wish that you could be wherever he comes to call “here.”