You Don’t Move On, You Move With

By Devanshi Tyagi

3rd Year, BA Sociology Honours

People say time heals, but time doesn’t erase—it collects. Like ink seeping into parchment, memories staining the soul, their imprints lingering long after the moment has passed. You don’t move on; you move with.

It’s like turning the pages of a book. The past does not vanish simply because a new chapter begins. The words of yesterday remain etched in your mind, whispering their presence even as fresh ink spills onto the pages ahead. Some passages are underlined in trembling hands and some smudged by the weight of you overthinking what the author said and what you read.

Loss, love, regret—they don’t fade, they settle. Like shadows stretching at dusk, they shift their form but never disappear. They walk beside you, not as ghosts haunting your steps, but as echoes of what once was, shaping what will be. You learn to carry them differently. At first, like heavy stones in your pockets, their weight pulling at your every movement. But over time, they become softer, woven into the fabric of who you are, no longer a weight but a texture.

Moving with the past means learning its rhythm. Some days, it will press against your ribs like a familiar ache, a melody that once broke you now humming gently beneath your breath. Other days, it will rise unexpectedly—an old scent curling through the air, a familiar laugh carried by the wind, a song that sends a shiver down your spine. But it is no longer a wound demanding to be nursed, only a scar, a reminder of what you have lived through.

The world tells you to let go, as if pain were something you could release like a balloon into the sky, watching it drift away until it is out of sight. But the truth is, you do not lose what has shaped you, and unfortunately or fortunately you will remember it like the wound on your hand that refused to heal.

And so, you turn the page. Not to forget, but to continue. To write, knowing that every word holds the weight of what came before. Because in the end, we are not meant to erase, but to endure.

We don’t move on; we move with and that is a kind of freedom in itself.