Part of my "book"

We each have our own history. Memories that we’ll never forget, along with ones we constantly try not to remember. There are scars and keepsakes and places that remind us of the past; we can try as hard as we like, but there’s no changing history. There are songs that bring us back and people that try to pull us forward. Each piece of the past is one more addition to who we are. We have secrets that we chose to hide from others and secrets we hide from ourselves. We can lie about the past, try to manipulate it into a more pleasant experience but in the end it is what it is. People are constantly changing, evolving. We’re not exactly the same from day to day. We hate the past because it provides a mirror into who we were, who we are. I hate the past because it’s everything that I used to be and I miss that. I’m convinced that one must keep moving forward for fear of being overtaken by the past; one misstep and you’re a goner. I’ve come close a time or two. You just have to continue running: keep going and never look back. It’s gotten me through this long, but times change. I thought I was doing okay, I thought things were going along smoothly; what others don’t know, can’t hurt them. Right? Wrong. Little did I know that when I walked into the library that day, I was walking into a disaster with little more than an ipod and a good book to protect me. Apparently, you can’t run forever.
I met him between the sci-fi and mystery sections. He was holding a H.G. Wells novel and I was absentmindedly browsing through books, row by row, as usual. It caught me off guard, to run into someone in such a secluded section on a Sunday afternoon. I was accustomed to having the back of library mostly to myself this time of day, however, seeing that he didn’t exactly pose a threat to my tranquil browsing, I continued down the row without a second glance. Moments passed and I noticed that he too and wandered farther down the aisle, closer to me and farther from the sci-fi novels he had been diligently gazing at. Who is this guy and why does he keep getting closer? His proximity caused me only little alarm but seeing as the normal isolation of the library that always appealed to me had been disrupted by this stranger, I decided to call it a day and head home.