Opposite of Nostalgia

I moved a box of old things from my parents house into mine. It's been sitting in my living room for too long, and today during baby's nap I decided to try to go through it and put it away.

I don't think there is a word for the opposite of "nostalgia," but that is how I am feeling now.

Instead of longing for the past, I am feeling a little tired of it continuing to show up. Coming across an old photo, letter, journal entry, or suddenly dreaming about an old acquaintance, the past is always interrupting my present,

The past is such a strange thing. It's over, but it's always there too. You can't change IT, but it has existed to change YOU!

Wow, weird to think about it like that....

I am a journal writer, and I have many, many books full of bad handwriting and old memories. I have certain journals that I love to look back on (the beginning of 9th grade--I was just learning who I was! I got over some pretty big challenges and I didn't have many regrets and my testimony was really beginning to form), and then there are others that remind me of hurt and pain and regret or just silly stupid crushes (why did I waste so much paper on a boy I didn't even talk to in 6th grade? It's embarrassing)...I sometimes want to burn those ones. But I don't, because I don't want to lose the past, even though I do???

I figure one day my journals might help somebody else feel a little less silly or something. Someday some 6th grade girl is going to read all my dumb ramblings about that boy and she'll TOTALLY get it and know that she's not crazy for having a huge crush on a boy who doesn't even know she exists. And at least that one reminds me to be gentle with junior high kids...because things that seem so silly to adults are their whole world just like it was for me!

The thing is, my world now seems so far removed from my past. I feel like there was a fracture in my existence that separates the old me from the new one. It was a slow-forming fracture, and I'm not sure exactly when it was created. It's probably even a life-long thing that's still forming--breaking the future me ever away from my past.

All I know is that I am not the same 8-year-old girl who first started journaling. I'm not that boy-crazy 6th grade girl. I'm not the insecure, shy junior high student afraid of answering questions in class. I'm not the silly flirt I was in high school. And I'm not even the same person I was a month ago or a week ago. Ever changing, ever growing me is still figuring out who she is and who she wants to be.

Do you know how that's even possible? A very important Somebody named Jesus Christ made it possible through His Atonement. It exists in the past AND present, and It is the reason I can change, and you can change, and people can become better and fix mistakes and move on. I can put the box away and not think about the bad times because my present IS different and those things only exist in record form because I CHOOSE to not burn the books that remind me how far I have come. The Atonement is the reason I don't have to live in regret, and I get to start over daily and choose how I live in the future. It's pretty awesome and it's pretty deep.

I enjoy remembering fun vacations and friends recorded in my journals, but today I am glad that I do not have to live in any of those past times. I am glad I can put the relics back in their box and store them away in the basement. I am supposed to keep moving on, and so here I go!