Not in a loud or dramatic way—more like a quiet return, again and again, to familiar rooms of memory. I didn’t always realize I was doing it. It felt natural. Comfortable, even. The past had a weight to it, but it was a weight I understood. The ending was already written. Nothing there could surprise me anymore.

I think that’s part of why the past can feel so safe. It’s already survived. It’s already known.

I grew up watching my father live there too—revisiting old moments, replaying conversations, holding tightly to what had been. That way of being became familiar to me, almost inherited. My mother, on the other hand, lived forward. She stood firmly in the present and leaned into the future with a quiet confidence. Yet somehow, I was drawn more strongly to my father’s way of moving through time.

I lingered in memory. I carried people with me long after they had moved on or moved away. I revisited old relationships and imagined alternate endings—what might have happened if timing had shifted, if growth had come sooner, if understanding had arrived before distance did. I didn’t just remember the past; I tried to fix it in my mind.

For a long time, I didn’t realize how heavy that kind of living was.

I remember my mother once telling me, “Don’t take a step backward—you’re not going that way.” At the time, it sounded almost too simple. Now I understand the depth of what she meant. She wasn’t asking me to forget where I’d been. She was reminding me not to build a home there.

Because the past, as comforting as it can feel, is not meant to be lived in. It’s meant to be visited—respected, learned from, and then gently released.

Meditation helped me understand that in a way nothing else ever had. It brought me into my body, into the room, into now. I began to notice the small, grounding things—the weight of my body resting into the bed, the quiet support of the mattress beneath me, the way the walls held me, steady and still. The warmth. The safety. The simple fact of being held by the present moment without needing to go anywhere else.

There was no fixing. No revisiting. Just being.

And in that stillness, something softened. I realized I didn’t need to reach backward anymore. I could appreciate the past without living inside it. I could honor it without romanticizing it. I could let it inform me without defining me.

I don’t long for the past now. I respect it. I love what it gave me. But I don’t confuse it with where I belong.

I live here—now.
Aware. Grounded. Open.

The past holds my wisdom.
The present holds my breath.
And the future… the future is something I no longer chase.