Memories are fickle.
They change, evolve, and fade as the gap between the past and the present grows.
Sometimes fond memories become less fond, even tarnished when viewed with lens of current events. Bitter memories may seem sweeter as the pain fades into history.
My anxiety is dangerous when I look to the past, to memories I am fond of and memories that are fraught with pain. My history is familiar, known, well travelled territory. The future is what terrifies me.
Fear of the unknown.
My depression has conditioned me to expect the worst. Even my treasured memories – the Nintendo Entertainment System, Christmas at my childhood home, marathon Dungeons & Dragons sessions with my friends, late night tennis matches, Boy Scout camp – all of them eventually had to end. I had to move on from the moments that made me happiest toward an unknown future, leaving me with the most dangerous phrase in my lexicon, “I wish”.
I wish I had continued my film studies.
I wish we could have stayed at our house in the country.
I wish I could go back to when I was 22 or 23, when I had my whole life ahead of me.
Instead of being grateful for what I have, what I could still do with the rest of my life, I would allow my illness to whisper in my ear, convince me of all the ways I could and would fail, that somehow failure would reveal to the world how flawed, unfit I was for this world. So much easier to look to the past, celebrate my former successes instead of using them to prop me up in the face of adversity, allow them to carry me toward future successes.
We should look to the past with some measure of awe, of pride, but our past can’t be all that we are or will be. Our past should serve to give us strength in the present to move toward the future, whatever that future may be.
The present will never be easy for me, I’ve accepted that reality, but I can’t let my past convince me the unknowable path of the future is too difficult to face.
Uncommon Karma 