I have to stop loving memories from the past.

I have to stop loving memories from the past and acknowledge them for what they truly are: memories. We all know how tricky memories can be. Memories serve as a diary that we all carry close to our hearts. Whether it is the warm sand sinking in between your toes at the beach or how fast you remember your heart beating when you finally had a kiss you’ve been anticipating, memories are something we enjoy replaying in our minds for a reason. However, in our life’s storybook, there are also certain chapters that we want to keep dusty, and we would rather not spend time scouring over every heartbreaking detail that made that chapter so unvisited.

You can tell which chapters in your life have been visited by how worn out the chapter pages are, maybe even dog-eared in your mind to hold on to for a bad day.

I know I, personally, am notorious for doing that. If I have a particularly good day, I will definitely jot it down in my journal or my handy dandy color calendar application on my phone to remind myself to hold on to this one. It essentially lets you rank your day from “Awesome” to “Terrible” and you can jot down a blurb to remind yourself of why. It’s fun to look at my calendar scattered with bright fuchsias, which means I have had an amazing day, to the rare turquoise squares, which give me a sinking feeling just looking at them. Sometimes I catch myself scrolling through the past few months in my color calendar application, my finger hovering over a taunting little blue turquoise square, especially on days when I am feeling a bit sorry for myself. I’ll click and it will register in my mind what happened that day that made me feel so horrible I marked the day as “terrible," sometimes I even see that my past self left a little note explaining why to my future self so I can relive it all over again.

It’s a bit masochistic, isn’t it? Opening up miniature time capsules you think deep down will cause you the same amount of pain as they did before. That’s the funny thing about memories you see, is sometimes they are wrong. Sometimes after opening the dreadful turquoise square, I scoff and realize it wasn’t so bad after all, but sometimes I realize I wish I had an option for worse than “terrible.” Sometimes I will think about past relationships or friendships and find myself longing for that happiness and bliss I had confided in that person. But then I’ll snap out of it and realize that no, it wasn’t as perfect as my memory thinks it was.

I will flat out say that sometimes our memories are unreliable. I can actually prove it to you. I have learned many things in psychology but one of the things I’ve learned as a psychology student and my rough (almost quarter century, not really) 21 years of life is that memories are extremely dangerous sometimes. Multiple studies have been conducted regarding memory and reliability and it was found that people tend to place greater faith in the accuracy, completeness, and vividness of their memories than they probably should. Dr. Catherine Loveday, psychologist from the University of Westminster stated that as humans, “we intuitively trust and believe in our own memories which means we also have a natural tendency to overestimate the reliability of human memory.”

I think memories are kind of like your ex; be very careful in how you handle them. Memories are an amazing way to remind you of great things that happened in your past and also to serve you as a warning to wean away from certain things, but please don’t let it stop you from pursuing your future with open arms because you are too busy hooking up with your past.