“Hi. Can you, um, help me out?”

Hi again.

I’m kind of stuck.

And I… don’t really know what I did.

Do you think you can help me?

I am not sure if I can even explain.

Well, it’s like, trying to peel off a favourite photograph from an old fashioned photo album. You know, the ones where you stick the pictures, onto sticky pages, and then cover them with clear film that comes along with each page? It’s not easy to remove a photograph from them. They’re stuck, to those, yellowing pages, unrelenting, almost as if those material captures were a part of the time they were clicked in. They do not want to budge from the book .You’ll end up bruising the picture or tearing a corner if you’re really determined, but more often than not it remains right where it was, placed and sealed, with loving hands, many years ago.

I kind of face a similar circumstance. Except that it isn’t a picture stuck to a page, but me stuck to a part of life from a time, that we would now call the” past”. It just won’t become a memory, which I can carry with myself in my mind; I am the one who’s stuck to it. Everything’s moving forward and everything’s moving fast, and I’ve tried hard, so hard, to etch myself away from what’s now history, to what is now. But I can’t.

And it’s bruising me. It’s tearing me apart.

I am stuck in something where I know I do not belong and it is painful. I can’t be what I want to, nor be what I once was. I feel like I am driving a car facing backwards. The car is moving forward, I am not. All I can see is all I’ve left and all, I’ve felt and I know I will cause accidents like this.

Accidents aren’t good. They hurt, and they destroy. They kill.

I need some help in this.

It isn’t like the past is anything dreaded; I actually enjoy dwelling in the bygone. I am a person, who has a favourite page in a novel I read when I was ten, that I still read, again and again, and I have this, favourite part, in a beloved song, that I have broken many stereos for, hitting the ‘pause’, ‘rewind’ and ‘play’ too many times. I love thinking of moments, my favourite moments, over and over again, making them last much longer than they were meant to. They are not really meant, to remain with me forever, I know, because with every passing summer it becomes more difficult to even remember the page number of my favourite part in that novel, and it’s a struggle to find cassettes with that song these days. But, I latched on, and made, what was meant to be a fleeting memory, live an eternity in my mind and that made me so proud, because I believed, I have gotten the better of Time.

I was so wrong; I was mistaken, big time. Memories, are only pleasant, when they appear when you want them to, or when it’s raining, during sunset, and it’s too lovely a time for reality. It’s better, sometimes, to just let go. But I can’t. I held on for too long.  Do you understand?

I do not like my favourite song anymore because now, the stereo’s broken again, and the same record plays on a loop everyday at 3am. It isn’t a nice feeling. Help me. Please.

I do not know where the stop button is and I can’t fall asleep.