Is the Past Really the Past?

there are people who want to know everything about your past, and then there are others who feel the past is the past - and should firmly stay there. interestingly, somehow i've moved camps. 

i used to want to know everything about past girlfriends and how you broke up, including just how many girlfriends you've had, and the tally for being dumped versus doing the dumping... i'm an inquisitive kind of gal, indeed. yet of late, i'm finding that i ask very, very few questions about the past. are you single now? and have you been single long enough that i won't have to deal with any weird ex-girlfriend drama? and the answer to those two questions are all that really matter to me. your baggage, you can check at the door. i'd rather that you simply walk in with free hands and open arms. 

yet i know though that our pasts have brought us to where we are, here, today. it makes us who we are, and it influences much of how we operate in each others presence, now. it's just that the details, i don't know if i care so much about anymore. and what a weird discovery for me to have made about myself. like when confronted with your past, or my past? i might have obsessed over such a discovery previously, but now? the past, as ugly or strange as it might be, just reminds me that we recognized mistakes for being mistakes and therefore, left them behind allowing us to have free hands, and open arms for one another.

could i be maturing? perhaps. or maybe i'm just more confident in myself today and no longer feel the need to compare how i stack up to anyone's past-girlfriends. that could be part of it too. or maybe it's also because my own past suddenly looks a little nutty and i just don't care to share that much of it anymore. (so, if you don't share, surely i don't have to share!) not that i have much to hide... i fully acknowledge that i've made some questionable decisions. and yes, i'll tell you pretty much everything and anything at some point if you really want to know, because i am an oversharer of course. or maybe the biggest thing about not caring about the details of one's past is the realization that because we've both made our share fair of mistakes with others, they're out of our systems and really, that translates into neither of us having to make those mistakes with or on each other, now. and that idea, i love. the damage, so to speak, has already been done... on others, that is. 

in some ways, it calls for apologies to people in our pasts because we had to practice on them to get to where we're at today... personally, i'm sorry to those folks as they had to be my guinea pigs upon which i tested out how to be functional in a relationship. but for my present and future? it also calls for some thanks for all that you did in the past including making all those silly mistakes you had to make with others but can now safely leave behind. i don't need to know the details and you don't need to know mine... but i'm just grateful that we won't have to learn those lessons with each other and can offer one another a fresh, clean slate. the past is the past, indeed.

Comments

[B]

i like this post.

[jessica lee]

@B - long time listener, first time caller!! :) thanks... for everything.