Seeing your past—or a person from your past—can for me at least be physically painful. I’m overwhelmed by a melancholic ache—and I want the past back, no matter the cost. It doesn’t matter that it won’t come back, that it never even actually existed as I remember it—I want it back. I want things to be like they were, or like I remember them having been: Whole. But she doesn’t remind me of the past, for some reason. She feels present tense.
