Days in the Past

There are some days I can’t get my head out of the past. I tell myself over and over things like ‘You have to let go of people who left your life’ or ‘you just have to be you’. But sometimes, even with saying those things to myself I can’t help but go back to the past. Anything I read I suddenly connect to events in my past, anything I do causes me to reminisce back to different times in my life.

It would seem like this isn’t really a bad thing. But with that drop into the past, pain always comes with it. I’ve been told by people before that you always have your memories, and no one can take them from you. That you can enjoy the things that had happened in the past, even if the people you experienced them with are not around you anymore. But that has never been a simple thing for me to handle. Mostly because I’m not worried about other people taking my memories, I’m worried about me doing it to myself.

I remember a lot. Everything. But it comes at a price. It means I can’t always recall everything on the drop of a dime. I’ll still recall it eventually, whether it was twenty years ago, or yesterday. But everyone else is not the same way. There has not been a single person I’ve known where I have not had this conversation with them:

Me: You remember that time we did ‘this’?

Other: What? That never happened.

When you’ve heard something like that enough times, you start to question your sanity and your memory.

Eventually, I stopped talking about my past altogether with people. I don’t do it often, and when I do, it’s because I trust that person. But then, even when I trust them I still eventually get that same conversation and it worries me again and I close up. As time has went on, I just don’t share my past, and that makes a lot of people think I’m distant with them, or that I’m lying. But truthfully, I probably am. Cause I can’t trust people anymore. I can’t trust them with the memories I made with them. or the memories I tell them. I have to bottle up the moments rather than sharing them, because I’m the only one remembering them.

I hate that feeling. Its like everyone around you tells you they love eggs and you make eggs for everyone but then they completely just get up and walk away instead of eating the eggs.

But lately, its been less of wanting to share my past with people, and more about the cruelty of my past. It reveals so much that is wrong with me. How many people I have hurt. What I’ve done wrong in my life. The lies I’ve made, and the ones I will make. There is so much of it. So much pain. Is it any surprise that when I have these binges on my memories I’m also completely crushed by them.

It may seem like an exaggeration but that’s where I can name just a few things.

1. My last year of high school I cut classes constantly and failed repeatedly because the second person to attempt to be a father figure to me, died. The first went into a coma. The worst part was, because of that I made it all about me, when the real people in pain were the person who actually lost her father and the wife left behind.

2. I quit high school because I no longer cared about people. Every one I had put my faith in were rejecting me. Teachers I liked, students who liked me. I saw their faces, and all I saw with it was revulsion. The same face I see on every person I’ve known since, eventually. Death was all around me then that year. And lies.

3. I rejected the first girl to ever love me. And the second. And the third. One in elementary school. One in middle school. And one in high school. Each one, I rejected, and worst of all, at times they desperately needed someone to remind them they were and are loved. The first went on to drugs, after I rejected them. The second became pregnant in high school and was not sure which man was the father. And the third killed herself only five months later.

And these are just three things to name from my high school years and earlier. I still have all my college days, and beyond to list. There’s the people I’ve forced into cheating on someone. The people I’ve broken up because of advice I’d given. Or how about the people who despise me because I’m the only one that has bothered to tell them the truth in seas of ‘white’ lies. Or in comparison the people I’ve lied to, because I was too much of a coward to give the full truth.

Through all of this. I learned a very important lesson about myself that I will always remember, especially when I’m remembering things like these: I am a despicable person.

Of course there are a number of people who would say otherwise. But they have all known me too little. I’m that person who seems too good to be true when you first meet them. But you just can’t resist it, because it all seems so true and real, and I’m so mysterious. And then the further things go in, the deeper I drag you down the rabbit hole, the more you realize: I am too good to be true.

I’m the wolf in sheep’s clothing who has forgotten I’m a wolf, until I’m staring down at the blood on my claws.

I don’t speak of my past, because most of all, I’m desperately afraid that it would make people run away from me quicker than they already do. Because if I hate myself for all the things I’ve done, and the only way you can know me is by me sharing my past, then how can anyone ever love me and know me?

It will always be one or the other.

Never both.