The Past is Present — and What to Do About It

The doors we closed to the past will open

Trauma therapy changed my life. It’s a dramatic statement but an accurate one. I didn’t just intellectually and emotionally process my past. It was more than that. I learned how to regulate my nervous system. I was able to heal and integrate my history in a way that deactivated so many lifelong triggers.

But lately, a long-buried trigger has come to light. It wasn’t a primary focus of those trauma therapy sessions, and it’s been dormant so long that I assumed it was no longer a problem — until that assumption became laughable. The past is present — and, yes, it’s a problem.

My parents are moving away. Every time I visit, there are more pictures removed from the walls and more boxes filled to the brim with their possessions. All of the time spent decorating their home and creating a particular aesthetic is reversed. It becomes less of a home and more of a house anyone could inhabit.

And it is breaking me.

For a long time, the story of my life was this: I was impermanent. Not in an existential way, or not only. Every three years, I changed schools. Whether it was redistricting or moving to a new house in a different school district, I never stayed in the same school or with the same peers longer than three years. By the time my father became a pastor, I had already reached my threshold for relocations. The three-year rule held. We spent three years while he was trained and educated, and then we relocated again — leaving me with three years to finish high school before it would be time to move for college.

I was always introverted. Making friends wasn’t something that came easily to me. While my sisters seemed to thrive with the changes, I was busy building walls and compartmentalizing my grief. I couldn’t let go of the people I had left behind, and I saw little point in making new friends I would be forced to leave soon after.

It wasn’t until college that my physical health became bad enough to seek a medical opinion. That’s how I ended up in therapy the first time. My therapist called it social trauma. I couldn’t adjust to college because the truth was that I had not adjusted well to any of the relocations that came before. I was surviving, not thriving.

These days, I have lived in the town I’ve chosen for close to a decade. I’m happy where I’ve landed, and I’ve grown strong roots here. My children have had one school system and a home that is our own. I have been at peace — insomuch as the last few years of chaos have allowed.

But my parents are packing boxes, and I am the child who cannot stomach change. Whose stomach literally hurt with every single packed box. Empty walls and curtainless rooms are a nightmare I’ve lived through many times. I know I won’t be the one to go, but I am the one left behind, and it feels the same.

The past is present in the way that it always is until we heal. I thought I could process it alone. I put myself through the steps of healing that I learned. I told myself that this move is a good thing for my parents, and I love my parents. But every single sign of change is prying open a door that is packed to the brim with feelings waiting to burst out. I stopped trying to do it all myself and made an appointment with my therapist.

It doesn’t matter how well-adjusted we think we are. How healed. How empowered. It only takes a reminder of something that hurt but didn’t fully heal to put us right back in the past. This isn’t the time travel we asked for, but it’s one we’ve got. I know I’ll need courage to face those heavy boxes I’ve put aside for later because later is here. Later is now. And I can’t fit a single new box inside that lonely room.

I stop trying. I stand outside that door and wait for the text back from my therapist with a date and time. The door is going to open. This time, I’m going to unpack those boxes so that when I wish my parents well in their new life, I’ll actually mean it.