Reconnecting with Someone from the Past Probably Won’t Kill You
Written by Mauve
Image courtesy of A24
There’s this unspoken rule on the internet that you should never let someone who hurt you have access to you again. I followed that rule for years. I was angry, and honestly, I thought I had every right to be. I had spent enough time convincing myself that staying away was the only way to move forward. Until one day, I didn’t want to anymore.
And to be honest, there is no shame in going back to someone who once broke you.
For many of us, it’s not just a choice you made in an hour anyway. It’s a long process, one filled with countless days and nights spent thinking about what it will be like to see this person again.
People only know the version of the story we choose to tell them. They don’t know what it feels like when years have passed and much has changed inside you. Emotions are complicated. They’re all about how you feel, and they’re uniquely yours. It doesn’t always have to make sense to others, but they should make sense to you.
Reconnecting with someone from your past isn’t always about hoping that it will turn out better this time. It’s about wanting to face the person who once hurt you with the new version of you who survived. Maybe there wasn’t one particular moment that changed my mind. Maybe it was simply the accumulation of years. I once came to someone with hopes that we could get together, but now I’m back as someone who has finished grieving.
Maybe it wasn’t simply the accumulation of years. It was everything that happened between them. I used to carry a lot more anger about the whole thing. It felt unfair that I had once believed we could become something, only for it to end so easily. But somewhere along those years, I learned how to live without him. I met new people, tried new things, and built connections that had nothing to do with him. I was slowly getting reacquainted with the version of myself that had been hurt, rebuilding the parts of me that had fallen apart. Turns out there was a whole life to live outside of one person. Who knew?
I also grew older. Holding onto a grudge started to feel uncomfortable. I learned that forgiving someone doesn’t mean that I have to welcome them back into my life in the same way.
Sometimes, it simply means I no longer need to carry the anger with me. Maybe that was the healing I didn’t notice happening.
Even though I wanted to meet up, I couldn’t help but wonder: am I somehow betraying the girl who carried a grudge against him like it was a personality trait?
Going back means wanting to recreate what you had, but to reconnect doesn’t always mean going back. You can have a new kind of relationship with someone from the past without rewriting the mistakes you’ve made. And maybe that’s exactly what I wanted. Maybe I wasn’t trying to go back. Maybe I just wanted to look back so that I could finally reconcile all that happened.
Maybe I was simply curious about what it’d felt like for two people who once hurt each other to talk again after years of growing on our own.
Admittedly, I didn’t reach out because I was completely indifferent. Perhaps a part of me missed him, and for once, I didn’t want to pretend that I didn’t. But missing someone isn’t the same as wanting the life you had with them back. That’s the difference.
I told myself that I would never ever go back to him. I’ve had that mindset for years. So, does honoring myself mean obeying every decision I’ve ever made…forever? I don’t think so, because respecting her means refusing to let pain dictate the rest of my life.
I believe you can honor your past without turning the pain into a punishment for the rest of your life. Imagine living your life in constant fear of your past! I don’t want that. That’s probably one of the things I’m really scared of: being haunted by the past.
The girl who decided to leave deserved to be protected, but she doesn’t have to make every decision for the woman I’ve become.
I was hurt back then, yes. But am I peaceful now? Yes. And it’s valid.
It’s sort of like Nora and Haesung in Past Lives. You don’t have to hate someone who’s hurt you, and admitting that they hurt you deeply is the first step to healing. What happened in the past, stays in the past. You can’t delete or undo anything.
We knew each other when we were both young and clumsy. It happened a long time ago, and we made the mistakes we did when we were just kids.
Who are you now? Who would we be around each other now? Would we even be the same kind of people to each other anymore?
Now don’t get me wrong: reconnecting with someone from the past is not going to fix anything or be the best decision for some people. You have to ask yourself: will it be worth the potential suffering? Is this a slap in the face to the version of me who suffered, and the version of me that’s healed?
And on the topic of healing, it’s possible that reconnecting won’t heal anything. Maybe it’ll simply show us what’s still there, and what isn’t. We could have a different chemistry, a new one, not the same as what we used to have, and that’s okay. Maybe being friends is what we’re supposed to be. And it doesn’t have to be the other way around.
Healing doesn’t always look like walking away for the rest of your life. Healing isn’t linear. I thought moving on meant reaching a point where I no longer wanted to know what happened to him, but no. You could remember everything that happened. You could respect the person who went through it. And because I respect myself, I trust the person I’ve become enough to make this decision.
I finally have the courage to face the past. Some people choose to bury their trauma (and there’s nothing wrong with that) but I’ve decided to face it and make peace. I have changed. I’m a different person now, and I’m meeting him as the best version of myself.
The decisions we make to protect ourselves while we’re hurt don’t necessarily have to become permanent rules for the person we’ve become. I know that now more than ever.
