I SHOULD JUST KEEP MOVING FORWARD by Rae Pathak

"I SHOULD JUST KEEP MOVING FORWARD" by Rae Pathak

For the longest time, all I had ever wanted was to return to the past and change my life. The absolute heartache of loving and losing, the terrible reality of change— all of it has given so many regrets. If I could, I would hold on to some moments. If I could, I would only love temporary things like that indie song playing in a café that I didn't know the name of, or that stranger I met and had a long conversation with in the bus we took to a familiar city. There's a sweetness in falling in love with temporary things. You let go of them easily knowing that you, too, won't ever return to find them again.

I have been scared of too many things my entire life. Someone said that if I erase my past, I erase myself, so I shouldn't mourn it. I don't think they get it. I wasn't happy with who I had become, so if I could change my past, I absolutely would. But all of that is just daydreaming in the end, isn't it? I can't take it all back, and no matter how painful moving on seems, I have to do it.

But then the nicest things arrive late in your life. The trips I took, the several heartbreaks I experienced, the ordeal of falling in love again with not just temporary things but things that had the power to build or ruin you again— all of it makes you realise that even if you don't want to, life keeps going on. When I was younger, some days I wished to not exist anymore. Later, I realised that I never wanted my life to end. I just wanted the life that I knew of so far to end so that I, too, could finally experience the joy and hope that people talk so much about. I learned that change is a sad reality, but it's also the most beautiful thing in the world. Change gives you the space to become someone else, to find more about the world, to forget the intensity of your pain. Time and memory are amazing things. Our wounds do not heal, but they slowly escape our minds as we keep on living.

In my late twenties, I find myself accepting my past wholly— like a dear friend I lost. I have come to realise that I have a big heart and parts of it will always belong elsewhere— with the people I have loved, the cities I have visited, the graveyards I have sat in, the strangers I have enjoyed a warm cup of tea with in a foreign land. I have learnt that everything I have loved will become a thing of the past eventually, but love will certainly return— just in a slightly different form. That much is peace enough. That much, for now, is joy enough.

Changing the past isn't possible, but changing today and tomorrow still is. Loving and losing is a process we all have to experience our entire lives, I have come to realise it. Some days we won't be able to accept the fact that things will never be the same, but there's a comfort in knowing that I won't be the same either. I, too, will be ever-changing, ever-evolving. And that is why I should keep moving forward.

— Rae Pathak

Illustration by Sam Yang

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