Vestige

I feel myself slowly but surely sink into depression whenever I get reminded of the past. You know: moments you wish remained with you for a little while longer; things that you hold dear, but have either been broken, lost, or gratuitously replaced; people who you wish could have held on just a little bit more to see you make something out of your dreary existence.

There’s nothing more painful than the feeling of realizing that you can never bring back those moments, those things, those people, no matter how hard you try.

Especially if a vestige of the past has become permanently ingrained into your immediate milieu—reminding you, forcing you to hold on to the memories of what has been already lost.

Teasing you. Haunting you. Piercing you.





I find it funny how we try to keep these vestiges, no matter how easily we could dispense of them. What fools we make of ourselves, really. Nevertheless, I try to see beyond the ostensible irrationality of it all. Is it because we like hurting ourselves that much? Are we all, by nature, masochists, who take pleasure in the pain of reminiscing? Or do we enjoy savoring the perfect blend of bittersweet in the act of doing so? Are we actually wired towards maintaining any sort of association with a lost entity; that we choose to do so not because we want to, but because it is an innate instinct? Or is it an automatic atavistic response?

Whatever the reason is, this reality sucks, and we, humans who are not afflicted with any kind of memory deficiency, are supposedly bound by this phenomenon. We are corny and sappy and weak and irreparable. But it is not unthinkable that the reason the past clings is because we let it.

Why?

Love, perhaps? We are loving beings. More than that, we cherish everything that we love. Maybe that is why the past holds on, and that is why we do whatever we can to salvage any remaining traces of that past. Love, even in its tiniest quantity, never leaves. We go on cherishing, even though we have forgotten.

The moments we loved…
The things we loved…
The people we loved…

Emotions dwell in our personas. Once felt, they become formidable facets of our personalities that will eventually define who we are. We feel anger. We feel fear. We feel anguish. The acute phase is ephemeral, the peaked intensity eventually facing a natural death. However, we will never forget the emotion we felt. We will never forget how that moment, that thing, that person, made us feel. That, I think, is the reason we never truly get to move on. A part of us lives in the past through the present.

The moments. The things. The people. Their memories.

They stay. They always will.

I feel myself slowly but surely sink into depression. The past sure is a powerful force to contend with. But I like it, whatever this is, that’s teasing me, haunting me, piercing me. Let it depress me, sink me down to a level of dolor that I have never been into before.

I don’t have a choice, do I?