Is the universe going anywhere? Is it moving forward? If it is I can’t see because I can only see the past, I can only look over my shoulder to a time I was happy and then heartbroken.
I cling to past happiness and pain, they’re my blanket. They remind me I’m alive, they’re the only measure I have. Without them who knows? perhaps I was never really anything at all.

Was I ever really that happy? Was the heartbreak so severe or do I make it worse? Do I exaggerate these things to make my life seem more worthwhile? Do I dwell so as to make life seem worth something?
Perhaps I’ve blown the past up out of all recognition and in reality there’s really nothing there, in which case my life really has been empty.

If I showed somebody else the past, the real past and not my mind's creation, would they think this dwelling warranted or would they see nothing? Would they see only wasted years during which I held onto something that wasn’t even there?

It felt like it was there, and it was because I put it there. I planted it as a means to avoid forward progress. I was scared of real pain so I created a false one, one I could use to protect myself. I carried the weight of a hollow cross so as not to be burdened by a heavy, solid one.

The more I look back, the less I see and the more I feel I’ve wasted my time. This imagined pain has shaped me, it has changed me. This contrived heartbreak has in turn created something. It has created me and now I can never go back.