Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story

19th Century philosopher, Henry David Thoreau once said, "never look back unless you are planning to go that way". Then again, he also has been quoted as saying "any fool will make a rule, and any fool can mind it". This advice of not looking back seems to be ubiquitous in everyday life. I have been told and I'll admit have also advised others not to look back. I will argue for myself that this should be taken more in the context of, less rumination more moving. As a direct contradiction to this advice once given, half of the very name of my blog reverie is based on nostalgia; on looking back. Preferably over a shared cup of Darjeeling.

I am neither a writer, someone who lives any kind of extraordinary life nor have I done anything or talk about things that others haven't done or experienced. I'm just someone who made the decision to write about my experiences one day as it all bubbled inside of me. A few things came together, after chatting with someone who felt my stories needed to be heard, perhaps it was the way I weaved them. Following that, a fight with my sister resulting in many thoughts in my head with no place to pour them out to. I have tried therapy, but it was not for me. It felt as though the conversations were steered for me, and I was not able to aptly release my feelings. But for some reason, being able to capture it all in words then hit publish, allowed me to release it into the universe and let it go. Restoring peace. 

I choose to write for myself on my own platform because well, simply put, I can write without rules. Disjointed sentences, paragraphs of ramblings, phrases without context - yet somehow my audience seems to still get my drift. Despite my breaking of cliché writing rules (see above where I began this post with a quote, and doubled down with yet another quote). 

Recently, I have been very interested in diving deeper into my past, my parents' past and my ancestry. Losing both my parents at a young age, and within that time they were alive even there are gaps. I felt as though my story was written for me by others and I could not make sense of much. I have been trying to look into how may parents thought, what they experienced and reasons to why they made the choices they did. What they really were like, instead of how they are portrayed. There are a lot of things I do not know about my parents but in the journey of self discovery, I do feel its important to dive into this to understand myself more, and my own beliefs. Are they inherited? Were they taught somehow? Does history repeat itself despite attempts to avoid it? Why do we do what we do?

In the same vein, think about the fact that there is a possibility that my son may experience the losses I have also endured but I do not want him to have to struggle to know who I was. This blog in essence is a dynamic narrative of my life which started off as something superfluous but has now evolved into a living testimony to the person I was, I am and am becoming. To the mistakes I have made, the times when I often felt I could not go on, gave up and the times I felt unstoppable and relented. To the life his father and I share, and the ones we lived before us. 

What do you do with memories of past relationships? Do you suppress them? Do you discard the memories? Unless you have had memory loss, this is impossible. 

I have kept many if not all, even if I do not have the ones with people I have shared my life with, the places we visited and all the accompanying lived experiences - they were real. The memories, they exist. Even if I am now strangers with the persons I once considered as close as family. Friends, lovers, teachers. They have all played parts in my journey, I have taken bits of them and kept them with me, like souvenirs from quaint shops. I have flashbacks to exchanges from two decades ago, I can close my eyes and return to places in my mind. To bliss, to torment, to shame, to hurt. They were not all good, but they were not all bad. Yet they all have shaped me.

Thoreau and I may have conflicting views on looking back but I maintain my disposition. You must look back, to be a better person than you were before.

You must look back to know who you are.