Time in the Past

Time is an unpredictable element in the world. It doesn’t stop or wait for anyone. Once it’s wasted, it is gone forever. Time, it goes so very fast when you need it to go slow the most. 

It was a fine day when time caught up with me, the past actually. For a very long time I’ve been avoiding the past but sooner or later, the past always catches up. You see, you can’t bury the past. You can’t escape it, the truth is it’s a part of your life, whether you like it or not. 

On that fine summer day, the past stood in front of me. I tried to open my eyes as hard as I could because once I close my eyes, the past will own me. I tried, but I gave up. I gave up when I started to smell the sweet scent of spring and started to see the beautiful flowers around. I slowly close my eyes and the blurry past became as clear as water. 

They call it “a walk down memory lane”. I neither walk nor run down memory lane, I experienced it all over again, and I felt it like I’ve never moved on. 

I opened my eyes as quickly as I closed it. The sweet scent was exhilarating, it’s as bitter as the past. 

I stared in the past and I took a deep breath and asked it what it was doing in my present.

What are you doing here? I said, almost like a whisper.

I am you. You are me. It said in an echoed voice.

Time, it will erase you. I told it.

It will when you will face me, but until then, you are bound to me and I will forever appear every now and then. 

No, you have to stop. I’m happy now. 

Happy? You have been avoiding me.

Because you make me unhappy. You make me feel pain. I don’t want to …

Feel pain? I do not intend to do it. I intend to remind you that I am here.

But I don’t want to. I have a choice to forget you.

You cannot forget me. I am you. I am a part of you. Face me and you can bury me in your deepest memory.

I can’t face you. Tears started falling from eyes.

You cannot fool me. You are not happy. You are trapped, caged by me. Until then, you’ll never be truly free or happy. It told me. Its white long cloak danced with the wind.

I was you and I am still you. Embrace me; it is only ‘till then can you say that you are free. I am the nightmare that crawls within you; the lies that comes out of your mouth. Face me and I shall grant you your freedom.

I closed my eyes and let its echoed voice linger in my ears. When I opened my eyes, it was gone but I know that it’ll be back.

The past, it has a way of crawling up on you when you least expect it. There is no other way but to face the past. It is only then when you face the past can you become who you want to be. 

I believe that the past does not define who you are now that is why I never bothered to say hi to my past. It was the past after all, just a hazy memory. I have seen the past before but it never stood before me. When it did stood before me, I knew then that I could not escape it anymore. 

I wondered, as the sweet scent of spring and the bitterness that it bring slowly disappeared into the day, how many people are prisoners of their past. Time is really unpredictable. You cannot move on without making amends of your past.