Tanubhrt.This.Side

The past is the story you are telling to suit your present! When I read this, I had epiphany! Is past really dead and all that we have is the present! Am I understanding the past just so that it suits my present! May be I am, may be this is what I did, may be this is what I am still doing!

The chapters that I read today talk about the importance that we give to the past just to make the story convenient to fit in our present moment. And the reason we are not able to change, is because change means Death! no body likes dying! We are okay with being just okay! It is true right! I mean I have gained weight and became obese, and losing weight would mean that the girl who gained weight has to die, and with her all the habits that lead to it, need to die! But to convince myself I have been telling the story of how depression hit me, and then covid happened, and then this job and I am just surviving, so its so hard to think about health! Jus too that it fits into my present, the present that says that hey, I don’t want to put efforts on to my body! I can’t just walk or jog! I am too lazy for it! So convenient right!

When I started reading the chapters, there were many chapters of my life that got unfolded! One of them being the Great Depression of 2017 which lasted till 2018! It was during this time, that I started telling myself that I don’t deserve anything in life, that all that I have is because my father paid for it! And that I am selfish and just so full of myself! I would remind myself, how I chose to study for my exam and not help my friends who were failing! I would remind myself of how one sister of mine when failed a class, had to repeat it, and never got a chance to get better, at least better at a scale that would make that failure irrelevant! I would compare her life to mine, and curse me for having risen above the failures of my life! Sometimes I think I strongly wanted to be someone who was self made, and in the process, I started to erase my past! Well, there is one thing called that there is no past, and the other, that no matter which dimension of it you accepted, trying to erase it, is never going to happen! You can choose to not give power to it, or meaning to it, but well I was not aware of it!

Every time I tried to erase my past, I failed miserably. And the more I tried to erase the past, the more strongly it came in front of me, as though reminding me that you cannot run away from me! Well, I guess we never really can run away from us right! We just accept our selves for what it was, but what struck me, was that you can always disassociate from your past. So, just because you were a failure in your school, does not mean you shall remain the same throughout your life. Or just because you could not achieve a goal few years back, does not mean you never will. I had a huge problem, and I think I still have where I would associate each of the current happening in the present with what has happened in the past, but what I understand now, is that although similar, they are not the past. After all, there is nothing new in this world, right? always a repetition of something from the past, something that has already happened and overthinking about it, makes you give power to that!

This ones for my Trichotillomania friends! You could be someone at the age of 10 or 12 or 18 or 21 or 16 or may be 30 or 40! I wanted to let you know that no matter who says what, it is hard! It is hard growing up without friends, growing up not having anyone to talk to, to tell the good things or the bad ones! And then finding such people and not knowing what to do, finding people and still being alone, it is hard! It is hard knowing that people judge you for your clothes, or for the fact that you get angry quickly or for the simplest reason that you are clumsy! It is hard feeling scared sitting next to opposite gender, feeling scared to go to bathroom, or may be to look at your poop every time wondering if the touch that happened made you pregnant or not! It is specially hard when you are child, who is not ready for any of it at all! May be you read the suicide letter your mother wrote, or may be you saw people teasing you, or well, just in general lost your friends! All I want to tell you, is that even if it happened, just look around in your present. Do you still don’t have anyone to talk to, is there anyone who is trying to connect with you, someone who is ready to listen to all of your stories, but because you are too scared or too used to being alone, you are rejecting the idea of being with someone, being in reality! Is it that you have chosen your past to be your present and continuing or living in the same miseries that happened years ago! are you still bullying yourself, and when asked upon why you pull your hair, you are blaming it all on your past, not seeing that may be the present has changed! I am not sure if it has changed for you or not, if not, it will and I want you to be hopeful about all of it! When it does change, shed behind the person who suffered and accept people! Just because someone made your life hard do not make it hard for people who are trying to be there for you! Most importantly, do not give power to the past hurts, to continue hurting yourself in the present!

The author talks about, and explains, that you need to operate as if there was no past, it is just a story! And you need to give more power and meaning to what you are doing in the present, and how aligned it is to what you are wanting to become in the future. The past in itself has not value, unless you give it to it!

What do we do now, the answer to the question that the author is asking to find! Irrespective of what has happened, and what has been, what matter is, the answer to the question, what do we do now! And then to give power and meaning to steps that we do for the future in the present! And as far as history is concerned, histories are always a written account of the perspective of the victor! You change the perspective, you change the history!

With this thought, I leave you for today! I hope that you and I find the courage to leave behind your past, and start on your trail to find answer to the most important question – “What do we do now”!

Amore,

Avantika