My mom had a hard time leaving our childhood home. My siblings and I, grown up with kids of our own, had been out of that house for decades. There wasn’t a chance we’d ever be back. But we’d left shadows of our kid-selves in every corner, and Mom fought letting go. I suspect that breaking her physical connection with that place meant acknowledging that a major part of her life was officially over.
I get that. Change can feel catastrophic, even if it’s something we’ve always dreamed about. It often feels like a door slams behind us long before we’re ready to leave the building.
Sometimes I miss parts of my life so intensely that they’re almost tangible. But the past I long for is illusory. I forget that those times I miss so much often felt as uncertain and messy as the present can feel right now. Even if I could re-insert myself into the past, I’m not the same person I was back then, and I wouldn’t react to situations in the same way.
Clinging to the past is grasping at a vapor.
Much of my longing isn’t for the times themselves but for what they represent. I miss my children’s childhoods, but I don’t need to go back to actively raising them. What I really miss is the ability to protect them, nurture them, watch them absorb new experiences and knowledge. I miss the mom friends I had back in those days, watching their children grow alongside mine. When I miss practicing law, it doesn’t mean I want to dive back into the intensity of that world–it’s missing a sense of accomplishment and purpose, using my mind in a very specific way. And missing my band days? No, I don’t want to sing in a band anymore. I just miss who I was back then, the rush of being onstage, the chance to craft a song.
I appreciate the opportunity to time-travel through my memories. Distance provides insight. Revisiting the past helps me understand more than I did the first time I passed through.
Maybe this is what I’d tell my mom, who cried long after she moved into the new house she eventually came to love: change doesn’t move us forward in a straight line–it’s multidimensional. Everything we’ve experienced stays with us. When I loosen my grip on a past event itself, memory gives me new ways to understand who I was then and am now.
And this can lead to some really wonderful places.
I just wrote a whole novel manuscript about obsession with the past…
Sometimes when I look back at old journals, I can see how I have romanticized my own history. I once ran across a college journal, from a time I remember as idyllic. I read through pages of angst, class stress and dorm floor drama that for some reason had me at an 11/10 anxiety scale WHY?? I wasn’t even involved in the drama…poor young Kristina, already fighting other people’s (silly) battles
More recently I filled up a journal notebook, and when I flipped back to the beginning of that volume, I noticed I’d been utterly hopeless and in despair about a difficult situation…that has actually now worked itself out better than I ever dared hope. It wasn’t that long ago, and I’d already forgotten how bleak my outlook had been. It was a useful exercise in many ways.