Looking back is as important as moving forward

‘Keep Moving Forward’ is a mantra that I heard a lot as a kid. I can’t really remember whether it came from all of the movies I watched, from the pop stars I idolised, or the media I consumed, or maybe an amalgamation of all three — but I remember being told that the best thing for anyone, was to just keep moving forward.

That’s something I’ve tried to do, as much as I can — any kind of rejection or failure that I’ve encountered, I’ve tried to brush it off and just keep going, not dwelling on it too much, creating more and more memories that were stored away and never really visited. Then I was diagnosed with anxiety, something I knew I had for a long time — and as part of my CBT treatment, I was told to look back at what I thought caused elements of my anxiety.

I did so, and through that process I encountered nostalgia, which tainted many elements of my past — memories, people, events played back in my brain in a new haze, coupled with a new longing to just reach in and be back there again.

This is when I realized something, both about nostalgia, and myself. By trying to move forward constantly, I had started to push away and ignore nostalgia, and my past.. Why? Because I was scared I’d be stuck there. I had an amazing childhood, and I was scared that revisiting it with the addition of nostalgia would mean that I’d be stuck, longing to go back there so much that I wouldn’t move at all.

‘The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there.’ wrote L.P. Hartly in their novel ‘The Go-Between’. But it’s also a country that you can never visit again. Your past becomes its own city of Atlantis — you know of it, you can long to visit again, but you can never visit again, except, in your pasts case, through your mind, in the glazed gaze of nostalgia. I realised that one of the reasons that I didn’t want to stop moving forward and most importantly, ever look back, is because I was scared of becoming stuck in a cycle of sadness, caused by nostalgia, purely because I could never be my past self again.

I could remember that time when I was young and innocent and carefree, before my anxiety set in at the time of starting school. I could long to be that past version of me again, but I could never be her, because she was gone, with only my nostalgia and memories to remind me that she existed, and that yes, I was once anxiety free.

But nostalgia isn’t a bad thing, I’ve realised. I can keep moving forward, working on my life, my writing, and with my anxiety — but I can also keep looking back, and maybe, if I keep visiting the memories of my younger self, I can move forward with even more strength and vigour.

Because if I once was without anxiety, then surely I can be that person again? It’s that thought, all thanks to nostalgia, that keeps me fighting and working on my anxiety. However much I long to move forward, and towards a person that is more confident, less anxious and more secure in life than my current 18 year-old self, I need to visit my nostalgia more often, and remember the confidence, love and power that my younger selves had inside them, because they all worked incredibly hard for me to get where I am, too. Because maybe visiting them again could mean that I can get closer to feeling that little less anxious, that little more confident, the same, almost — but just that little more nostalgic.