No Man Left Behind: Growing from vs. Separating from Our Past

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

Whatever you find, Whatever you’ve been through, love it as much as you possibly can; A new revelation calls for a proper revision…

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I was talking with a new friend yesterday, we talked about all the things I love talking about. Yoga, health, philosophy, wellbeing, love, sex, god, relationships, trauma, drama, psychology and recreating one’s self. I said something to him that I had been contemplating and writing about that day and it hit me that the words I used perfectly contradicted an article I had previously written, Can’t Take My Old Self With Me by Carter Miles. I told my friend…

“I can’t leave my old self behind.”

It’s funny how as we unlock and evolve, we ascend to greater heights and then we see things from such a radically different perspective… we wonder how we didn’t realize this before? C’est la vie. 

Many years of my life I have been trying to fix myself, perfect myself, or just become something other than what I am.

I tried on different roles, I covered myself with tattoos, all of this because I didn’t like myself. I definitely didn’t love my self.

I’d grow a little, maybe a lot, start gaining steam and think ‘yes this is me now’ only to eventually fall back into old feelings and old patterns. Then I’d get down on myself, I’d spiral into shame or apathy and think “welp, I guess this is the real me after all.” A pendulum, I’d swing back and forth and back and forth, but every time I fell back I got stuck there.

This has been a crazy two years… as a yoga teacher, my business was turned upside down ‘due to covid’. I haven’t felt financial security for these two years. There were great highs and great lows, the lows particularly low after the highs. I got stuck in lows.

I hiked 700 miles, I moved across the country with a best friend / lover, it didn’t work out, I drained all my savings living with my heart locked up. I moved back across the country, back to my old life, I didn’t know if I would keep living much longer. I seriously thought about ending it. 

I found some temporary stability in my old life, my old city, my old work. I met a woman. She’s fucking great and she loves me. It’s taken us a while to let ourselves be really seen by one another. So much facade, so much fear, but we learned how to trust and we kept leaning into it.

When I’m down she loves me back up and when she’s down I do the same. I had to learn how to love and I had to let myself receive it.

I moved again, Los Angeles turned kinda crazy and again it was time for me to leave. She still loved me, even though it hurt to do so. We realized, if this is good, we’ll make it work. We are. With her I’ve learned to love another and I’ve learned to love my self.

I’m in a new city, I’m creating a new life, I’m discovering a new me and I fucking love him. But still I live like a pendulum going back and forth. But, I’m wiser now (at least a little) and I’m starting to see more clearly…

I can never be just the new me. I’ve been through too much, my experiences, my pain, my patterns have been baked into my neurology. But I’ll also never just be the old me, I’ve experienced too much beauty, too much love… I can’t forget it.

I woke up the other morning, feeling tired and distressed and I noticed that feeling ‘welp, this is what I am’. I got caught up in apathy, then I realized…

I am not the new me or the old me, I am the pendulum that swings back and forth between the past and the present. I cannot forget the life behind me, I have to bring it with me.

So as I swing back into Carter past, I grab whatever I find and I fucking love it as much as I possibly can and as I love it, we swing together back into the present…and the pain is gone.

We’re all caught between the person we were raised and programmed to be and the person that we truly are and want to be. Neither one is real, we are only what we are now. The path from what we were to what we could be, that path is love. So whatever pain you feel, love it. It’ll make sense soon enough.

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You may also enjoy reading Giving and Receiving Love: Releasing Negative Thoughts and Beliefs by Bridgitte Jackson-Buckley