The past always finds fun ways to creep up on you and test your strength. Just when you think you have gotten life down and things are going good, WHABOOM. A blast from the past smacks you in the face to remind you that it is still there, that sh*t still happened, no matter how much you try to forget about it. It’s as if life knows that you finally got over something or someone of importance that it wants to trick you into falling back into that dark hole again.
While most of us choose to keep pushing it away and run from it, sometimes it is best to dive right into it with a glass of wine.
This week I got pummeled with information about an ex that I wasn’t even searching for. Like any normal relationship, after years of having him in my life, there were still moments where I would wonder how his life turned out for him, but never really went searching for the answers.
Did he finally find what he was looking for? Was he happy now? Did he finally go to rehab for his stripper addiction? Did he finally move out of his mom’s basement?
It isn’t until you find out a major life-changing event about them that can make you question your own choices and the what-ifs. The moment where the past comes to slap you in the face and make you question how you really want to handle this.
In the past, if something went wrong in a relationship, I used to meet my friends at the bar and we would drink to get over it. I would try to escape from reality and drown my sorrows away by laughing the night away with shots and friends. Hell, I would just straight up black out to try to forget and cry to about strippers taking away all of our men. But in this case, I couldn’t do that. I didn’t want to just push the past away like I always did. I wanted to fight it head on because in this case, I knew I had on my “big girl pants.” For too long I had let men push me around and rule over my feelings. So when it came to life coming back to bite me in the ass, I laughed.
Hard. I was laughing to the point I was crying. I toasted a beer to his behalf and proceeded on with life. I didn’t find myself hurt or angry. I didn’t want to lash out. I didn’t feel the need to cry or scream. This wasn’t the person that I was anymore. I wasn’t letting his choices rule over my feelings, that was all up to me. It was the first time in a long time I was proud of how far I had come. I was so elated and somewhat relieved because I realized that person I was before wasn’t me.
That’s the thing, when it comes to our past coming back to bite us in the ass, sometimes you have to bite back. You have to remember that your past isn’t who you are anymore. Just because this is happening now, doesn’t mean that you have to indulge in the actions that you use to, to get over the current situation. We are supposed to make mistakes in order to grow. It’s just that sometimes the past has to remind us of that. To show us how far we have come and how we need to keep pushing on.
Lesson to be learned: If things were meant to be, they would be. It sounds so cliché, but as time goes on, you begin to see that your life is far better off than what you thought it was going to be. Life doesn’t always want to go the way you want it to, but those are sometimes the moments where you are so much better off. Another lesson: Time does actually heal. It is a bitch and goes at its own pace, but you will be able to recover, no matter how harsh the circumstance.
Featured image via Jude Beck on Unsplash
