How to leave your past behind

The older you get, the more the past accrues. Things drift away on the horizon, and you lose sight of them. There's places I've been, and things I've done, that I know intellectually I have, but I now no longer have any memory of. What I remember is the story, not the event.I imagine that following another twenty years, yet more memories will get packaged up and boxed that way. If you don't use them, they get stored. All you get left with on "search" is the text summary.And so it is with women. I think it was Tucker Max who said that over twenty-five (lay count) and you start forgetting names. Over fifty, faces. Over a hundred, that it even happened at all.I have found myself in many conversations with women obviously pleased to see me, chatting animatedly, and ending with a sincere request that we keep in touch... and I've not a clue who I was speaking to. For the sake of politeness I go along with it, I know she hasn't mistaken me for someone else because she's calling me by name, and even more disconcerting is when she asks if I'm still living at the same address or have the same car; while I stand there desperately running her face through the database and getting no hits. She is obviously in off-site "archive" now.I was going through my bookcase a couple of days ago and came upon a chick-lit book that looked out of place and obviously not mine. I picked it up, examined it, and in the inside cover I found the inscription, "I'm leaving this with you as I can't be bothered taking it back down the road :-) Jude x."Jude? I'm using the real name left in that in that gift. I have no idea who that is, but it sounds like we spent some time together, and that she came "up the road" from somewhere to do it. Despite having gone to the effort of travelling to see me, I continue to draw a complete blank on "Jude."I found a Hermes boxed tie last year in my second wardrobe, the one I reserve for "best" items. Again, I know I didn't buy that tie, but I have no idea who did? And I have no idea why I filed it away and forgot about it, because it was a very nice tie and an expensive gift to receive. I did manage to narrow it down to two suspects, but that was nothing more than superficial supposition. Well, I wear it now, so thank you, whoever you are.A Hermes tie. Not mine but similar.Whoever these women are, they are long gone.However, they don't all stay gone. The longer you're on this planet, the greater chance they'll turn up again, and Facebook is the great facilitator of that.The women who do turn up again, I've found were not old flames looking to reminisce about old times, but rather women who I had less than satisfactory outcomes with first time around.Way back in the World Cup of 1998 I was dating this Welsh chick who I was nuts over at the time. I know it was World Cup 98 as we watched the England game in her flat. The one where Michael Owen scoredthatgoal and made his rep.She looked like Anthea Turner - as Anthea Turner looked at the time - and she just did it for me. She was a flirt and a half though, not short of suitors, and I'd been into her for months before we started dating. Except I was maybe "dating" her more than she was dating me because the "into" sentiment wasn't reciprocated.Even then I recognised that, tried to kid myself on, but she was never in any great tearing hurry to want to spend time with me, and I'd choded my way into a flimsy "relationship" with her. She wasn't convinced but she'd just broken up her boyfriend, so I guess I was handy to help regain emotional equilibrium.Damn, though, I was into her. I'd get hard just speaking to her on the phone and hearing her voice! What the hell, it's true. So I went on total spazz-out meltdown when she dumped me."You're dumped"Didn't take long, a few weeks. I remember calling her up on the Friday evening, I'd not heard from her, and in those days, pre-texting, people did actually speak on the phone. She sounded obviously disappointed when she picked up. If she'd had caller display, I'm sure she wouldn't have. However, I was chipper enough for us both. After some tooth-pulling small talk, I asked her if she was doing anything. She haughtily informed me, "I'm either staying in on my own or I'm going out with a friend." Then silence. Then "Look, I'm busy, we'll speak later. I'll call you. Goodbye."Never heard from her again, but did walk past her in the street and seen her arm in arm with another dude a few weeks later. High-ho. I was upset, but I didn't harp on it. There was no text, no social media for me to torture myself looking at, and we didn't share the same friends, so it easy (or easier) for her to drift away.Until she came crashing back on Facebook last year.It was one of those same as everyday days, when my phone buzzed, and a little later I checked it out: (Facebook) Anthea Turner has messaged you. It was like getting a message from the dead. I wasn't pleased and I wasn't annoyed, I wasn't even that surprised as it wasn't the first blast from the past who's come roaring back like this. I was just more... "the fuck does she want after damn near twenty years?"The message started off introducing herself and asking if I remembered her, and giving me a summary of our relationship - minus the stuff she hoped I'd forgotten about. This wasn't a girl I had forgotten about, but it was one I hadn't thought of in years. She'd disappeared completely off the night circuit not long after I seen her with the dude, and a chance bump into a friend of hers some years later, confirmed she had indeed moved elsewhere, and to where, no one knew.I got brought up to speed now, though. She'd went back to Wales, then London, then Italy, and now the midlands. Very nice. We "friended" and I got to catch up on the other shit she'd posted over the years - and of course, quelle surprise, she'd just split from her latest man.All these years later, and now she looks me up. She'd message me daily, I'd be polite and indulge the reminisces, talking about long closed bars and clubs, and clothes long gone to the charity shop. It was mildly amusing, but I didn't ask if she'd children or had ever married, because I just didn't care. I don't mean that in a bad way, this was just... a stranger who I had only the most tenuous of links to. I didn't hold a grudge or wish her ill, on a human to human basis, I was glad she was alive and healthy... but that was it.It was done. Me and her, our time was 1998, and it was gone. That's not meant to sound melodramatic, just true. I can admit I was upset at the time, but like I said earlier, I have no memory or emotion of it now, I just know I was.Watched it with her. But Owen couldn't do that now either...So, I start to leave my replies longer and longer, and when she finally says it, because I don't, "Be great to meet up again and chat some time," I never replied at all. I thought about it, reminding her with some abridged version of her dumping of me etc., but it sounded wounded still, no matter how I tried to word it, and I didn't want her to think that, or give her that. So, in the end I took a leaf out of the female playbook and just stayed silent - then defriended her as my reply.It just wasn't worth the calories. We didn't have some great romance to rekindle, it was akin to going out of my way to meet up again with someone I once sat beside in school class for a term. As far as the romance, we'd fucked a couple times, it was no great shakes, and beside a couple photos in a packet gathering dust at the bottom of a drawer, I'd nothing to show of her in my life. I didn't think bad of her, but she was just someone I once knew. And I was happy for her to stay there, at the bottom of a drawer. I didn't particularly want to see her older, with a thicker waist, crows lines, and now dying that blonde hair to keep it that way. And I was older too!Just leave it in the past where it belongs. But it brings me to case No.2.A few weeks ago Kardia, one of the women from my memoirOne Saturday Night, suddenly messages me. It'd been four years since we last met, and again, we'd parted due to a third party (shall we say). I heard once from her in the interim, another message, wanting to chat, and I declined as I correctly surmised she only wanted to talk because of a row with the man. Because suddenly I always "understood her better." Ever since then, if she did message me, she did it apologetically - but it was always because she wanted a shoulder to cry on.So, I wasn't too surprised when I got that message in the summer. I didn't want to talk, she was being all mysterious, saying that we "needed to" and it was "important" so I gave her my number. And then had her for an hour on the phone in a conversation I cared as much about, if it'd been someone trying to sell me double glazing.Yup, she'd split up with the man. I didn't ask but was told. After a period of politeness I excused myself because it was evident she wasn't talking my cues i.e. lack of responses, as an indicator I didn't want to talk. If I hadn't,  I might still be on that call yet.Then came the "friends" request which I reluctantly accepted. Then the WhatsApp messages that I gave two or three word replies to - days later. And the liking of everything I did on Facebook. Plus some other calls that I never picked up, and a message one Saturday night that she was in town, and in the hotel bar not far from me.Which I replied to on the Sunday, ignoring the bit about her being "over the road."Again, there was no malice in any of this, it was more "are you serious?" Like, you dumped me - remember? You had a chance to be with me, and you looked at my life and said, "No. I don't want it." So, I quietly defriended her too and hoped she'd notice and get my message.When a woman comes back for you years later, she's not coming back for you, she's coming back forher. She didn't give a fuck about you then, and she doesn't give a fuck about you now. That's not bitterness, but it is bitter tasting truth.She wanted out; so she is out. I've said it before, and I'll repeat it. When a woman dumps you, you are not, as some guys think, helpless. You can't change her mind, but what you can do is make up your mind: you make her decisionfinalfor her.Then you move on with your life. I call itgoing Samurai. It's not done with revenge in mind, it's done out of necessity. In the casino of love there's no take back on a losing bet. The wheel is spun, the cards are dealt. The House doesn't give you your money back because you "didn't mean to bet it all."And that's what these women have done, the ones who reappear from your past. They bet it all and lost, and now they're asking for a take-back. It just doesn't work like that. The chips have disappeared down the croupier's hole, and they aren't coming back. Either walk away empty-handed or with a hand full of cash. There's no in between.The House isn't sucker enough to give the money back, and neither should you be. Don't be the fallback guy on permanent standby for an indefinite number of years; don't be second best. You don't want your dream car twenty years later with 100,000 miles on the clock, but still trying to sell the 1998 Porsche at 2016 prices.It's just done. There really is nothing more to be said. Your vectors are going in different directions in the great graph of life, that they briefly intersected again doesn't change that.I have no bad memories of these women. What solid memories I do have are good. I don't dwell on the end, because the end is never representative of the relationship. I don't bear a grudge for being dumped, no more than I do against a door when I bruise my shin off it. It is just simply something that happened, but which I have no desire to relive. The boat has sailed.To quote Kierkegaard,"Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards."The past is where it belongs, and both you and she, are too.