the past

13Aug11

The other night I dusted off the old G1. I had one single intention of resetting the phone back to factory conditions so that I could relay it to a friend in need, but what was supposed to have been a quick click of a “clear all” button turned into an hour of me rummaging through old data, text messages and pictures.

I wasn’t sure what I was looking for, but as soon as I started to meander through the remnants of last year, the momentum had picked up, and I could only grit my teeth as I masochistically dragged myself through a whirlwind of my past.

At some points during those four years, I remember feeling as if I would never figure it out, that my heart was forever consigned to something, someone, that I knew was not right. It was love, and yet it wasn’t. And even the text messages from my old phone conveyed as much, that I had feigned happiness and contentment for so long.

I don’t know why it took me as long as it did. I would be lying if I said that I didn’t love him, because really, that was what hindered the ultimate cessation in the first place. Perhaps it was because it was immature kind of love, a naive belief that all that time and effort would have at least amounted to something, that I had not wasted part of my prime youth on something that was imminently doomed.

The past is exactly what it is–the past– and is meant to stay there. I give other people the benefit of the doubt and try my best not to judge them for their past; I know that I was not the girl I once used to be, and neither are anyone else forever bound to his or her history. I hope in the future, I will be able to recognize if things go awry (I sure hope they don’t, though!), and that I’ll have the maturity and strength to recognize it and walk away.