The past is the past.
The past is in the past.
Yet, it lingers on, branded into the mind, twine embracing those invisible, intangible things called thoughts, called feelings.
The moments of the past, each moment, some a second long, others an eternity, come and go. They live and they die.
They die, but their ghosts haunt their unfortunate, or fortunate, victims, molding the lenses through which they see the world. Coloring the shades with their darkness, lightness, richness, paleness. Robbing them of their purity, replacing it with hope, rigidness, fear, love.
The cold, ghostly breath of influence that those souls fight with words like, “I am not my past”, and while they are not their past, the twine of the past still embraces them, sometimes hidden, other times squeezing tight.
The breath of the past surrounding them with icy shivers and claustrophobic manipulation, whispering a subtly threatening “never let go, never let go”, while they try to let go, but end up holding tighter because the past keeps them safe, or so they think.
Trying to cut the twine, but only tangling up further, pretending it doesn’t exist, or maybe trying to escape.
Either way, collecting scars, unable to ignore the festering brands on their minds, the putrid thoughts and paralyzing feelings. Always fighting harder, always getting tenser, always pretending to be freeing themselves from the twine of the past, while getting pulled further and further into a bottomless pit filled with shame, anger, agony, suffocating nothingness.
But the past will never let them go. They can cover the twine, tattoo over the brand, repeat affirmations of strength, courage, and truth, but the past will always be there. They, nobody, can ever extinguish the flame of their past. History, personal history, no matter how unvalued, can never be erased. Waiting, patient, resurfacing in moments of quiet, never allowing them the quiet.
Until they give up, find moments of surrender, and in those moments of surrender, past what they think will kill them, they find a loosening. They loosen, and the twine loosens, and they are not free from the past, but they are together. Cohabitating in the maze of the brain, in their thoughts and feelings. Maybe there isn’t peace, maybe there never will be peace, but there is acceptance.
In acceptance is where that thing called strength lives. Courage. Happiness. Love.
My name is Andrea and I live in Los Angeles, California. By day, I am an actor and by night I am working towards a degree in nutritional science.
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