Invented Past

The Invented Past

We return to old memories

as if they were solid.

As if they still existed

exactly as we recall them.

But the mind is a quiet editor.

It polishes the past,

softens the edges,

adds light where there was none

and calls the result nostalgia.

It erases the ugly.

Drops the uncomfortable truths.

Invent details that never

happened

to protect the ego

from what actually was.

Childhood becomes golden

in the retelling

a warm, innocent country

we claim to remember.

Yet much of it was

conditioning,

pressure,

the slow training

into the person we were told to

become.

Early years vanish entirely.

Later years are rearranged

until they feel meaningful,

even beautiful.

We project meaning

onto events

that never occurred

the way we now describe them.

The past is not a museum.

It is a story

the mind keeps rewriting

so we can bear to live with

ourselves.

What we call memory

is often only

the version we can stand to

keep.