When You Refuse To Let Go Of The Past, You Miss Out On The Present

I haven’t just remembered the past, I’ve memorized it. By heart. Ask me about it and I will tell you even in my sleep. Tell me to get over it and I will agree just to ruminate over how I could never become such a traitor.

I look for the past every single day. I spend my present looking for something behind it. I tell my present, I’ll catch up to you. In a Minute. Really. Go ahead. I’m right behind ya. But every time I think that maybe I’m falling too far behind, I realize I can’t even see the present anymore. It’s supposed to be right here, right now! And if I can’t see the Present, how in the world could I see a Future?

Living in the past is one of those detrimental metaphors that the human mind so passionately allows—or can’t help but allow. Either way, it’s useless. It’s painful. It’s a waste.

I can’t decide some days whether it’s me living inside of my past or my past that’s living inside me or maybe even that we are just roommates in a place cut off from the world. All the other days I don’t even realize that just means I reside with a ghost.

I mean well. I do. But I’m deranged in that way—in the hopeful way. The kind of hope that paralyzes. I am hoping my loyalty to my past will somehow resuscitate it; that my dedication will rewind time and make the past a present that never moves.

Hell, I even beg God to help me do it. He laughs at how ridiculous it is for me to think he’d grant me a power he doesn’t even grant himself.

Every guardian angel in Heaven sighs, saying, Give it a rest, won’t ya?

I hear that inside my head and out. I read it in my books and my texts. I see it in my dreams, both those of day and mares of night.

And I answer, too! I always say, I want to. I really fucking do. I want a rest myself.

So, I think to myself: maybe the best way to give it a rest is to stop acting like it doesn’t deserve to do so in peace—to rest so peacefully in a death I need to acknowledge.

I think to myself: let what’s dead be dead and let what’s living live—and try to remember I actually am a part of the latter. Try to remember that I only ever made memories by being alive in the present.

Paying respects is a purchase that does not warrant a receipt because what’s being bought, well, it’s a whole life of pricelessness. It’s a transaction that plants flowers at its grave. An exchange that costs the seller just as much as the buyer.

Paying respects is always affordable and always worth the highest value.

Allowing peaceful resting is the only way to create wholesome living. It’s the loyalty deserved—not just to today and tomorrow but to every single yesterday.

So, I’ll have to talk to my heart and my mind and the heart of my mind and the mind of my heart cause we’ve got so much memorizing to undo. Until then I’ll try to remind myself to remember that there’s a today I’m missing out on while I miss a yesterday that’s begging to be let go of.