I often found myself retreating and re-connecting with certain people only to be shattered and mistreated for years over and over again. In view of the fact that upon reminiscences, I would only remember the better parts of the relationship. Not the toxicity, undermining, and belittling. But rather the occasional trust, being loved and given attention to. We like to focus on those strong, gratifying emotions and allow them to cloud our entire memory of an individual.

We miss people from our past when we are lonely or in despair. We look into the past for someone to support and understand when we need someone to lean on but have no one to turn to. Though, that is not love – that is us clutching at straws. It’s loneliness stretching our imaginations and allowing us to dwell on memories that are more interpretation and less of a reality.

Other times, we don’t miss the person we were with, we miss the version of ourselves when we were with that individual. When we reach back into our past and remember the experiences we had together, how vulnerable we were, the feelings we felt, we aren’t thinking much about the person we were with but rather what that individual offered and allowed us to feel.

We need to recognize that we are honing in on the resulting emotions, not the causal actions. Particularly, when we’re missing someone who would constantly hurt us because he or she simply did not care. We need to take a step back, to get reacquainted with our reality.

With that being said, what we are missing is the reality that having that individual in our lives allowed rather than the individual. We miss the way we felt and the people we became when we were with him or her.

So, I wonder if we were to find the same or better offerings, and version of ourselves — would we stop reaching into the past?