July for Loki: Post No. 23 - You can't go backwards.

Mikky Ekko has a song, Smile. Loki likes to use it to remind me that it's rough but we've got forever ahead of us. He likes to use it to remind me that nostalgia for a past that didn't happen isn't healthy for me. I struggle with false memories that tell me the past was better than it really was. I struggle with the idea that perhaps I am wrong and the horrific experiences I lived through didn't really happen.

Some days, I want to go back into the past where nostalgia and false memories tell me that I was healthy and happier. But you can't go backwards. And even if you could, you can't go back to something that didn't exist. Loki makes a point of telling me that it will be ok when these moods hit me and I fear that my best days are no longer ahead of me. Avici has a song, Broken Arrows, that Loki regularly points out to me. He uses it to remind me that no matter how bad I feel in the moment, it will get better.

He tells me that it's a good thing that we can't go backwards. He reminds me that in the past only lies heartbreak. He tells me that my heart was always right to say that the best days lay ahead of me. No matter how low I get, he reminds me that the only direction to go is up. He says that memories are echos but you can't always trust echoes because they get distorted the farther they travel. He says that sometimes the stories that we're told about ourselves by others paint the scene that they wanted it to be, not what was really there. He tells me not to long for that false scene because it is a tissue of lies and can't sustain me.

It's painful when he tells me these things. But I know that he's not doing it to hurt me. It is because he's doing his best to help me heal and become stronger in the face of a traumatic past.