Backwards Or Forwards In Time?

Although I have borrowed this post's title from my latest time-travelling obsession, it isn't going to be a post about Doctor Who. It is just another of those introspections of which my life seems to consist of, these days. So, if you find them boring, don't bother to read any further.

Ever since I moved - or rather ever since I knew I wanted to move - I feel at a crossroads, having to decide if I want to live my life backwards or forwards.

During the last decade or so, I was reluctant to change much, and as a result my life became increasingly stagnant. To get moving again, forwards in time, I now have to let go. Let go of things and possessions, but also of illusions, old habits, obsolete ideas. They all became dead weight, a ton of baggage that is slowing me down, binding me to my past, not belonging to my presence. And certainly not to my future, whatever that may bring.

Many are just jetsam and easy to get rid of, but others were dear to me, once precious assets and memories. To let those go is the most difficult and most liberating experience of all. Once I gather the strength to let them go, there's suddenly no more need to romanticise memories as of a love essentially based on emotional blackmail, or of past relationships mired in guilt.

So I am sorting through possessions, giving some things away, selling others. Furniture, bags full of clothes, boxes full of books, every one of them laden with memories. Although a lot is already gone, there's still too much left: Letters and diaries, photos and videotapes - countless parts of the person I was, no longer belonging to the person I am.