Facing the Past to Heal the Future

I’ve been thinking about how much I let my past mistakes and old wounds decide what I do now and how I feel about my future. It’s human nature to learn from our mistakes and use caution the next time we’re faced with similar problems; but what happens when we dwell on those personal poltergeists enough to stagnate ourselves in the present?

This particular grouping of fears has provided me mental blocks to things like leaving the house or having any kind of hope for a productive and successful future. All I see in my past is financial irresponsibility and insecurity, as well as a series of situations that marked the black stain of bad luck on every corner of my life. Any time I look toward my future, I see a struggle for success against the odds of who I really am: a perpetual failure, flake, and emotional hermit. And it’s really hard to get past that negativity to a place of reinvention and courageous positivity.

I tend to go through a mental cycle on this front: getting sick of my negativity and stagnation to the point of getting up and doing small things to help myself out (working out, finishing schoolwork or a book, getting out in nature, cleaning the house), and then I start getting confident and planning a bit bigger (future herbal career, where to settle down, budget for future income to reach these goals), and then some catalyst implodes my confidence and faith in myself, so I lay down on my bed for a couple of weeks and do nothing out of fear of fucking up. And the wheel keeps spinning.

While I find myself aware of this cycle, even now I have a hard time getting my head around how to break that wheel (in the spirit of Daenerys Targaryen) and move forward with the confidence that I can overcome my past and become at least a part of the person I’d like to become. It may be because this cycle has become too familiar, too comfortable. I know what happens next in this cycle; whereas, once I’ve broken the cycle, who knows what happens next. And maybe it’s fear of the unknown that keeps me looking back enough that I let those fears rule my present. Maybe I shouldn’t be trying to learn from my past mistakes; rather, I should remain aware of them but also look forward to making future mistakes in order to further my education in life—find new perspectives and shatter those like the ones I’ve shattered in my past.

As Awolnation said it in Kill Your Heroes: never let your fear decide your fate. It’s a fervent hope of mine that I won’t allow my past to rule my future, because what’s the point in living if all I’m experiencing is reruns? I figure life’s too short to live in a constant state of paranoia and avoidance. There comes a time to stop licking the wounds so they can heal and more wounds can be made and learned through; and now is that time.