Should we ever look back? 💌

Notes on moving forward.

My website used to be a blog. Hundreds of thousands of words still sit in the backend, in this dormant 15 year library of creative distillation. Iterations of life that not many people choose to document. I cracked it open recently to have a curious peek at my old writing now that I’m finally showing up with words again, here.

Reading years of curated thoughts from past pieces of yourself is exactly as you’d imagine - wild. I didn’t know it until this week when I dived back into the archive, but post by post I’ve unwittingly catalogued more than a decade of a life. This particular version of events was designed to be shared, and of course parts of it are dolloped in cringe, but thankfully my navel-gazing has generally always come with an awareness of encouraging others to try and make sense of themselves and their own worlds, too.

I guess in that regard, not so much has changed. 

But it wasn’t as uncomfortable I had anticipated, meeting my younger self so suddenly and so deeply in the back end of Wordpress, with nothing more than a few clicks. This was late 20s me, not late teens me, who I mostly want to scoop up and hug and protect at all costs.

No, like a lot of people at that age, late 20s me had a sense of self. A career, a partner and even a joint mortgage. Still, I couldn’t have known the lessons I was yet to learn, or the way that life was yet to crash in with heartbreak and hard decisions and despairing disbelief at the terrifying world we inhabit. But I also couldn’t have known how it was yet to crash in with so much joy, meaning, fulfilment, adventure, laughter, friendship, love in all sorts of exquisite forms and exulting disbelief at the incredible world we inhabit, too. Looking back with the knowledge of what was to come made me feel so happy for the life she was going to live.

It made me wonder what crashing, what joy - and the exquisiteness that can exist in both - is yet to come for me, now, too.

I found this that I wrote in 2017, in the triage of a messy breakup. Although more acute, the same sentiment is there:

‘That's the thing about life - it can't be split, not really. It's all life - all the time, in all the places. In overwhelming joy, and in excruciating pain. In the lessons you were prepared for, and the ones you wish you'd never had to learn.’

I wrote this exactly one year later, reflecting with a renewed sense of self. I could have written it yesterday; this love letter to friendship, to rebuilding, to quiet contentment: