"Yesterday is Gone

"Yesterday is dead

"Get it through your head and walk away"

Ray LaMontagne sings about a lost love in that song. Not to worry: my love and I are still going strong. But those words have been running through my mind recently as I've been mulling over my past.

Since I left the family church 5 years ago, I've often felt deep regret, and sometimes even bitterness, about the frustration and existential dilemma I experienced during my college years. It angers me to think about the fun times and the relationships I missed out on while struggling to acknowledge and confront the doubts I had about my childhood church and ultimately Christianity. I frequently find myself feeling cheated of important formative experiences. I resent the fact that my misgivings about the church inhibited my natural impulses to form friendships and to pursue interests outside of academics. I poured myself into my books to avoid dealing with my frightening feelings of doubt.

Many people often express the view that they are grateful for the experiences of their past, because they are satisfied with who they have become. It's difficult for me to say that. On the one hand, I made good friends in college, and I successfully navigated an intense religious crisis--one that in all seriousness could have left me a lot more psychologically scarred than it did. On the other hand, I don't feel like the person I've become because of that experience is someone that I'm thrilled to be.

Now this is not going to be one of those self-pitying notes in which I outline all the things I don't like about myself--at least not anymore self-pitying than I've already been. The truth is that I developed some patterns of relating to people and built some pretty thick walls between myself, others, and my emotions. The truth is that I've been feeling lately like I am a boring person--that I've protected myself to the point of finding myself uninteresting.

I can't even pinpoint what it is about myself that I'd really like to be different. I would just like to be less guarded, less fearful of making connections to other people, less anxious about every little thing. Although in reading that last sentence, I'm beginning to see what part of the problem is: I know who I don't want to be and what I don't want for my life; I'm less clear on who I do want to be and what I do want for my life. I should probably work on that.

But, back to the song. I think that it might be time for me to put the bitterness to bed. I'm not saying this will be easy for me. As I try to untangle and work on some of the issues I have in relating to people, church and family history will inevitably come up. Additionally, I think I sometimes relish the feeling of blaming others for my situation. (We all do that sometimes, don't we?) However, at some point, I'm just a whiny gal who can't let go of the past. Plus, why let that negative period of my life continue to dictate who I am today and how I feel about myself? Yesterday is gone. Yesterday is dead. It's been dead for 5 years. I'm going to try to walk away.