Ghosts in the Attic

What do our memories mean? Do they define us? Or is the past dead? I once read that the past is not even past.

Do we just cling on to memories because they remind us of who we used to be, and invariably, people always like who they used to be better than whom they are now; unless may be if you were a drunk or a convicted felon.

Why do our memories move us so much? move us to tears, to hysteric laughter, shake us to our very core; or even drive us to enthusiastically deny that we are moved by them simply because who we are today is ashamed of them.

The ghosts of our past will, apparently, haunt us, may be even till after death. Is this a good thing so that we never forget were we came from and what made us who we are today?

The most vengeful of these ghosts are the ones you never see coming, the ones that were lurking in the shadows of your soul for so long you could never consciously summon them. But there they are very much alive, or dead, or whatever it is these ghosts are. The past is never dead.

We all know that you can never escape your past, shun it or deny it, but we all tell ourselves that that was who we were not who we are now. Could be true. But it will always be there, part, if not the whole, of we are and who we will become. Knowing that the ghosts are there is the worst part of it.

It may be a macabre picture to envision the inside of your soul, of your heart, like a bright beautiful house with a closed attic and basement that you ignore and act as if they are not part of the house. But they are, and that’s where are all the ghosts go to play. And those weird dreams you have sometimes; those figments of a life well behind you that sometimes flash before your mind’s eye; those faint far away sounds that come in and out of focus, that’s where they come from, from that attic and that basement.