Why does time only flow one way?

Why can I not see anyone from the past anymore?  Their presence--no, their very existence, erased.  Mine too.  The old Timm[ie]...why is it that they are gone now, and I can't meet them, can't talk to them?

I guess the same could be said about the Timm[ie] that is soon to be, the Timm[ie] that will be.  But I have no sentiment toward them, no attachment.  It is only the people, friends, love, memories, letters, sounds, smells, experiences of the past that I feel unrevocably bound to.

For a brief moment today, I was talking to you, and I thought fondly about the past.  My mind wasn't filled with regret, or longing, or bittersweet remembrance.  I was simply happy that the past had happened at all, happy for its existence.  That's something that I never feel.

And now, as I finish writing a letter to a friend who I last saw some 6 or 7 years ago, I increment the number in my Letter Log and update the "Last Written To" date.  The last letter I wrote to this person was at around this same time last year.  Ah, that's right...this past Christmas was the one where I was trying to escape my past, to set myself free of my attachments and not keep believing in fantasies.  That was...foolish in a way, but necessary.

Why does the past pull me away from the present so much?  What is it that makes me disregard what *is*, and instead long for what *was*?  And if I really could go backward, wouldn't I just be leaving this moment too?  Even if I really could go back in time to the past, that wouldn't help anything...it wouldn't help at all.  My "now" would just become yet another "past", one that I would have to say goodbye to.

It's not really time, is it?  It's change.  Losing time is always a concern, but really what scares me is the change.  "To change is to die.", you told me.  Does that mean that all those people I once loved are dead now?  In a way, they are.  And how can I not stop to mourn them?

And if they could speak to me, what would they say?  Would they tell me to stop mourning?  Would the Timm[ie] of a year ago, of two years ago, of 7 years ago, what would they tell me?  What would they say?  What would they do?