Have you opened the window to your past lately?
It is a curious thing, this past business. The more you escape it, the tighter it holds your hand, dogging your every step, feeding on your tears, fueled by the remembered pain, spinning and weaving nostalgia about moments that once were, and somehow – somehow, for something that is well gone by and done with – curiously real, alive, each sharp shard of pain as tangible as the salt of your tears.
Sometimes, it is not even your own past.
Have you ever tasted the pain of another’s past? Someone you know and love.
That is the worst pain… for each time their voice roughens with regret, each time their eyes grow misty with the memories of something that you were not a part of; that is the worst pain for you could not be there. They did not ask you for permission to come with a past, your best friend who once shared beautiful, candid moments with a former soul friend; your lover who loved with an innocence someone else she will never forget; your sister who lived away for some time and whose rich life you lost for those few, long years; your gang which has had a member once, and has the most beautiful photographs and shining memories to show for it.
You want to go back in time, vindictively erase it. Or – and this is the truth – be a secure, happy part of it, of that thing which is now forever denied to you. Yet you know you never will be there, that it will always be around, this past – that it will never leave. In the deepest recesses of your heart, you don’t want it to go away.
For it is addictive, this pain. It is carthartic, this crying.
A few of you nod quietly. You know. You have been there. You will go there again.
And you, and only you, will know why.
Revel in it.
Open the window to the past. Unfasten the bolts of your memory, select one particularly sharp hurt, and revel in the tears, the pain, the oneness with yourself, the cleansing, and the resultant peace.
Go on, do it. We all do sometimes. Some more than others.
Revel in it.
