You Can Never Go Back

You can never go back.

Recently I found myself in a familiar town with a sort of haunted past. It is the sort of place you associate tidal waves of feelings and memories to, and they come rushing back immediately following that first fateful city limit breath. The boundaries are far enough away not to think about but close enough to occasionally visit unexpectedly. The memories it produces are never neutral; high highs and low lows, the depth of human experience. But like with many life phases, it is how it all ended that stands out the most.

This phase of life was not my best. I had surrounded myself with authentic people. Good people. And like authenticity does, it exposed the weakness and facade in myself. Why is it that many of our reactions to goodness is to rage with the darkness inside us? It is this light that so readily exposes the dark in ourselves and others.

You can never go back.

How I wish I could sit with each one I hurt and explain. Tell of my selfishness and convince of my “spiritual” maturity. But they already know. The wisdom of the hurt always outweighs the insight of the repentant. I would brokenly admit to all my failures if they would listen. We would engage in a healthy purging of a battered ego. This might be welcomed, but probably not.

Is there a shelf life on such things?

As memories fade, does such resentment follow?

For all the years I tried to downplay this phase of my life, a lot of good also came out of it. It was the brokenness of this season that pointed to something wholly other – something outside of my own guarded heart. For this, I am forever indebted to those whom I readily wounded. Hurt people, hurt people and forgiven people forgive people. I have to cling to the hope that they understand. Their memory of me has faded into the dark recesses of a seasoned mind. Perhaps I am the only one who thinks of these things with any regularity.

Perhaps guilt has a longer timeline than grace.