Thinking about the past

I used to be someone who reflected a lot on the past, the negative and positive of it. For quite a while I’ve found myself not really thinking much about the lesser sides of my past anymore – I do think of the positive ones sometimes but not as much anymore either. I used to get sad rather easily by thinking about bad stuff that’s happened but I’m not doing this anymore. I do still save and cherish many items from the past, and I wouldn’t happily part with them. The past two years (well, roughly) I’ve felt much more happy than I’ve ever been in my life. Everything before it just seems more shallow somehow, as if I was but a shade of myself. I have many fond memories of things, this is true, but only the past two years I feel like I’m really living (if that makes any sense).

One can ponder whether it is good not to think about negative sides of the past anymore. Am I repressing bad memories? Pushing them away? Or is it simply choosing not to address these fiddlets of thoughts clambering through my mind, instead letting them find a place to float down to like a feather in the sky?

I do not believe it is bad what I’m doing. I’m happy, and thinking back of the past is not something I might enjoy (aside from, obviously, the good memories). When talking about “past” I’m referring to the lesser nice things prior to the aforementioned two years. Thinking back about last year isn’t something I do a lot, either, but, seeing as my memories are happier there in general, it does happen more often (does that make sense?).

Anyway, the reason this topic came up was because my parents were given parts of video of their children on tape, on DVD, from when we were young. They watched it last night and during dinner the topic came up. They really enjoyed it, which is very nice. I told them I don’t watch it anymore (nor my photo album) because it makes me feel sad, uneasy, uncomfortable, bad. I see myself at a young age and what I want to do at that moment is to tell her that everything is going to be okay. That’s something I rather doubted when I was a child. I can read it on my (as a child) face sometimes, what I must’ve been thinking (whether consciously or not). I guess it reminds me of my unhappyness, of how I felt, of things that happened. Of how I didn’t understand so many things.

I thought it might be something to write about in my blog. I could say more about it but I’d rather not think more about it or become any more specific in case I show this to anyone I don’t know all that well.