One time a friend came to me needing a distraction.
She had made a mistake in the past,
something she thought was buried.
But that day, it returned heavy in her chest.
Later, I asked how it was going.
She smiled and said it was better now
because she saw a TikTok that said,
“The past shouldn’t affect your present.”
I stayed quiet.
If those words gave her comfort,
I didn’t want to take it from her.
But inside, something stirred.
Because I remembered the old me —
the one who tried to do the same.
I buried my past so deep
it still whispered at night.
And in the daylight,
I pretended it never touched me.
They say the past shouldn’t affect your present.
And how could it not?
After all, it’s the reason you stand the way you stand.
Bury it, and it only presses deeper.
Yet hold it in your hand,
and you can finally see it.
Not neat.
Not pretty.
But real.
The past doesn’t vanish when you erase it.
It only grows heavier underground.
In your hand, however, it softens.
Not erased, but acknowledged.
Still heavy, but carried differently.
And that’s the part I couldn’t tell her —
that the past will touch you,
but it doesn’t have to weigh you down.
In your hand, the past becomes part of your story.
In your heart, it only becomes a weight.