It is easy to become convinced that the past is absolute. That because you made mistakes, you're somehow less deserving of success. That the people who seem to do everything right in life somehow have a clean slate when it comes to the rest of their lives. They don't. No one does. There are very few people, if any at all; who are put together so well on the inside, that their lives are reflections of the easy ones they seem to live on the outside. Everyone has made mistakes. Everyone has wasted years. Everyone has been a less-than-stellar version of themselves. We simply do not continue living off of our worst days. And maybe there is something we need to learn about that, too. Your history is a factor in the story, but it isn't necessarily the writer. 

It’s one thing to be able to recognize your past for the reality that it is, and another to let it take complete control over everything else in your future. You can recognize that you’ve screwed up, but not think of yourself as being a complete screw up. You can recognize that you’ve wasted time, but not consider that your time now isn’t even worth wasting. You can recognize that you’ve put your trust in the wrong people, but not decide that you’ll never trust anybody again. It seems like such an easy task to carry out when you’re just saying it. But it’s much harder when it’s actually your own life that you’re living. Because it’s difficult not to look back on your past through the eyes of regret. You look back on it with all the knowledge you now have after the fact when those involved knew nothing of what they were doing. You berate yourself for not knowing something that you had no way of knowing. You ask yourself why you haven’t learned from your mistakes, why I haven’t learned from my mistakes, why we never learn from our mistakes.

(Maybe because you couldn't have known?)

You were there - not in the place or situation, in that particular one, but you were always you. You were that version of yourself, living with the things they knew. Perhaps they were doing their best with those things. Maybe they were not, but they genuinely did make a terrible decision. Maybe they hurt someone. Maybe they hurt themselves. There is value in taking responsibility for that. But responsibility and punishment - even self-punishment - are not the same thing. You need to learn from yourself, yes. But do not spend the rest of your life hating yourself. In some instances, we believe that for us to progress, we require closure. We need clarity in the form of an answer; an apology; and the reasons for our actions, which may even include why we were unable to see the truth that stares us in the face.

Perhaps we will. Perhaps we won't.

Maybe your future cannot depend on it.

There are some questions that have no satisfying answers. Some people leave without one. Some chances will have been missed. Some relationships end before they're supposed to. Some things cannot be undone. You can spend years in front of a locked door wondering what might be behind it.

But eventually - someday soon perhaps - you need to walk away. Because your life continues somewhere else, and does not allow you to stay there.

This is where starting over is different from pretending the past never happened. You don't have to erase yourself to have something new, in fact, perhaps you shouldn't. The things you've lived through can teach you. The mistakes can make you more careful. The wasted time can teach you what you do not want. The relationships that ended can teach you what you will and will not accept. Even the years - the wasted years - can teach you something. Perhaps not something beautiful, but something understandable.

You feel there is this strangely cruel expectation of you. That you need to reinvent yourself, to be someone completely new in order to move on. To leave the old you behind as if it was some embarrassing chapter that needs to be burned like a witch. You don't have to be a new person, sometimes. All you need is to be the one who makes different decisions. The scared you can still be a part of the brave you. The you who made the mistakes is a part of you who knows how to make fewer ones. You do not have to destroy yourself in order to begin again.