Haunting Your Own Memories

On revisiting the past without a trace

I am painfully sentimental. I see the good in everyone, even those who have hurt me badly. Even those where, perhaps, no good remains.   

I see the fuzzy haze of a memory and, even if it was bad, I long for it. The softness of the moment, the time that has passed. 

I know that with each passing moment I am older. My family is older, my friends a little farther away. I yearn to keep anyone close to me forever, even those I need to let go. 

Watching time pass is painful and lonely. Especially in the darkness of the Winter, when everything is silent and solemn. 

I have a habit in these dark winter months to begin haunting my own memories. I seek relentlessly some comfort from the passage of time, some proof that both the good and the bad times truly happened the way I remember. 

As memories become more distant, I can feel them slipping like sand through my fingertips. I become frenzied in trying to hold what little I can. 

This habit leads me to places no one should be. It leads me back into my past, alone, with any attempt to rekindle what once was mine. I start to think of these people, the ones who were cruel to me, and remember what they used to be. 

Then, I wonder if any part of them remains. I pester myself until I find out. It never goes well. It is impossible to bring these former loved ones back from the dead. My monkey's paw, I call it, each time I rekindle a relationship and find it just as rotten as it was before. The putrid smell fills my lungs and it poisons, leaving a dark stain on a memory that was once sweet.  

You cannot bring them back from the dead. The truth is, nothing is the same. Nothing will ever be the same again. 

And, if somehow you find yourself able to bring them back, able to live with the rot, you still may find that the version of them you craved no longer exists, and maybe it never did. 

Do not drag its rotting corpse with you; it is too heavy to sustain. 

When I was young and hurt, I used to throw out everything related to the pain. I used to remove it entirely as if removing the proof would target the source. This is never the case. 

Of course there are things you should let go of permanently. But my advice is to merely stash it away; lock it up in a closet and forget about it for years to come, until you feel the memories again like a cavity. These souvenirs are haunted objects. You may haunt them, but do not haunt the living. 

It isn't fair, of course not. These jagged endings, they were never supposed to happen like this. They were supposed to be free and easy, natural and peaceful; not filled with blood and tears. 

The sudden loss of innocence was never supposed to happen like that. But it did, and if you were given a do-over, it would again. There is no changing the past, because everyone else has moved on. If you find yourself in the past, you must understand that you are there alone. 

What's dead is dead. There is no reviving it, so we must learn to let it stay in the grave. Perhaps, after years of practice and years of forgetting, one day we will also be able to rest easily.