Stop Letting The Past Haunt You

Yesterday was terrible.

Perhaps you said the wrong thing and hurt someone you loved. Maybe you spoke from a place of anger, frustration, betrayal, or sadness and you lashed out. You didn’t think before you spoke and you hurt their feelings.

Now you’re not sure how to fix the thing you broke.

Now you’re not sure where to go from here.

Now you’re not sure if things will ever be okay again.

Or maybe you didn’t do anything wrong yesterday—perhaps you were the one who received a verbal lashing. Maybe the one you gave your heart to dropped it and it shattered. It doesn’t matter if you saw it coming; it doesn’t matter if you didn’t. Right now, you’re sitting with the pieces of your heart in your hand. Right now, you’re not sure how to put them back together, either.

Yesterday was terrible.

Trust shattered, hearts broke, and you’re not sure how to work your way back to the place where breathing doesn’t feel like a chore.

You’re not sure if you’re ever going to feel the spark of sunshine in your heart again.

You tell yourself that you can never put yourself in a place of such vulnerability, pain, and heartbreak again.

So you become guarded, locking your heart inside a fortress and throwing away the key. You tell yourself that you’re going to be more careful this time. You tell yourself that you’re not going to make the same mistake again. You tell yourself that you’re open to finding love again.

You say yes to a first date, and a second, and a third. You sip cocktails at happy hour, you meet for coffee dates, and listen to stories. You laugh a little, too. You start to relax a little at dinner, and just when you feel that wall falling down, yesterday comes creeping back into your mind.

Yesterday, when you hurt them.

Yesterday, when they hurt you.

Yesterday, when everything came crashing down around you.

It doesn’t matter that yesterday was, in actuality, a few years ago—the pain of those moments hasn’t faded. The pain still seems as raw as it did back then. The picture of your broken self still haunts you.

It sits with you at dinner, too.

So you stop yourself from speaking. You smile and you nod, but you don’t let your guard down. You don’t bare your own soul—you still feel the ghosts of yesterday sitting with you at this new table.

But you see, when you do that, you’re missing out on your new normal.

You’re missing out on the love that is staring at you from across the table. They’re no ghost—they’re real and living and breathing, and they want to be with you. And deep down, you know you want to be with them, too.

So put the ghosts to bed.

Recognize that even though yesterday was terrible, tomorrow doesn’t have to be the same way.

You’re allowed to forgive.

You’re allowed to move on.

You’re allowed to stop the haunting.

So please, say the spell. Make your peace. Acknowledge the hurt and the heartbreak and the lessons that you learned. Vow to yourself to be better from here on out, to love others and yourself better, and then leave yesterday in the past.

You don’t have to let it haunt you anymore.