WILSHERE: We have to be kinder to ourselves

As someone who likes to wake up early and stay up late, late nights can be an interesting time for me. My late nights are saturated with reflecting on the day’s events and writing about them in the diary I’ve kept since eighth grade, de-stressing with my gym buddy, trying to get work done with friends and inevitably failing. More recently, I’ve been using my late nights as a time of reflection and dramatic poetry writing, with the smooth sounds of Sinatra playing in the background until I fall asleep.

Recently, one of my friends came over to talk at night, and we spent seconds and minutes talking about our pasts, who had helped us and who had hurt us. She carried hurt in her words, and she was weighed down by those in her past. I saw myself in her words, weighed down by those in my past, people I’ve lost, people who have been left behind. Sometimes I keep myself awake thinking about mistakes I’ve made, those I’ve left in my past, those I can’t leave behind. Sometimes I end the night with a Sinatra record on repeat until I can find my peace.

This type of thinking can be dangerous. Reliving moments that hurt us rehash old emotions. When we delve into previous situations, we open old wounds and we open ourselves to be hurt by past mistakes and failings. It is a tricky thing to handle — one must try to nod to his or her past without delving into the emotions that were initially felt. Through this process, we become hard on ourselves. We do not apologize to ourselves.

Maybe there is no remedy to amend the ways we treat ourselves. We cannot snap our fingers and be abstained from the emotions and experiences we carry. We have to resolve to put pieces of our past behind us. We question messages sent, words spoken, promises made and broken, and we examine our own relationships and their faltering like crime scene investigators. We revisit and review the evidence, the motives, the fallout, the result.

We need to grant ourselves peace. We have to be kinder to ourselves. I am no exception. I am the first person to blame myself when things go wrong. I replay situations and mistakes in my mind as if they were scenes from my favorite movies. I carry past conversations and distant memories with me and hold them as I would hands — tightly, as if to never let go.

I haven’t granted myself the closure that I need. I haven’t stopped naming myself the guilty party. I haven’t let myself let go of the things that didn’t work.

This is not to say that this is an easy process, one that happens overnight or over a cup of coffee with a new person. This is not something that can be mended with upbeat songs and an inspirational montage. This is more than just moving on. This is moving forward.

This is resolving to let go of conversations, promises made and promises broken. This is closing the wounds we reopen each time we hear a sad song or see something that reminds us of people from our past. This is also not to say that we should forget our experiences completely. The happiness and the hurt that come from our relationships help shape who we are as people.

Our past is as much a part of who we are as our present and our future. This is to say that we have to be kinder to ourselves and resolve to put pieces of the past that hurt us behind us. This is to resolve to recover from the damage we cause ourselves by rehashing old experiences.

We need to grant ourselves the closure we need to start to move on, to move forward. We need to stop bullying ourselves and grinding ourselves to the core with things from our past that haunt us. Moving on and resolving issues from our past are mutually exclusive, and we can help ourselves move forward. Deciding you no longer owe anything to the people in your past can be a liberating thing. Resolving to be kinder to yourself means that you can start to heal.