It's easy to get stressed out as an adult. With school, work, personal relationships, starting to pay bills and rent, plus deciding what you want to do for the rest of your life, it can all become too much. It's easy, in those times, to start remembering life before college, maybe even before high school, and wishing you could go back to a much simpler time.
While this habit can sometimes be rewarding, if you look back on good memories and remember how you felt in those moments, sometimes it can lead to you comparing your life now to your life then. This is when the remembering could get toxic and make you only feel worse.
For instance, I tend to think about the friend group that I used to have. We used to do everything together and always be there for each other, but time has changed that. We've all just grown apart over the years.
But wishing to have those friendships back and wanting it to be the same as it once never did me any good because they can't be.
As sad or as heartbreaking as it can be, not everyone is meant to stay in your life. Life changes people, especially during college, when everyone goes their own paths to follow their own dreams.
Along the way, maintaining those friendships that you thought would last forever can be challenging.
But there's no use in spending all of your time wishing that those were still your friends because chances are, you aren't the same person anymore, and they aren't either. You have to begin to look at it as the fact that that person was in your life, they taught you a lesson or got you through something, but life goes on.
The same can be said for other things in life, like family. Families grow up, they change over time. And as much as you want to be a little kid again when the whole world was easy and fun and seemed whole, you can't go back.
You can definitely look back on those moments and remember what it was like, but it won't do you any good to wish your life was the same as it was back then. Because it isn't. And it won't ever be again.
So go ahead and look at old photos and videos of your childhood and your moments with friends and family. Don't forget those moments, because they made you who you are now. The good, the bad, and the ugly of your past have shaped your life into what it is at this very moment.
But don't let those memories control you. Don't waste your time being sad that your life is different than it used to be, because that just means you're growing up. And even though growing up sucks in many ways, at some point, you have to let go of the person you were then.
Don't ever truly forget that old you, because looking back on who you showed you just how much you've grown and changed over the years. But you have to realize that you are somebody else now.
And that somebody might not have as much fun as you did as a kid. That somebody might not have as many friends or chances to make memories as you did as a kid.
But that's just how life works. And instead of looking back on your past and wishing you could go back and be that same person, smile at those memories, but realize that that is in the past.
You have to look forward now, using your past not as an escape from who you are now, but as stepping stones to who you will soon be.