I am free from the burdens of my past.

Long-distance walkers post things home. Halfway up the trail there is a post office in a small town where people parcel up the stove they never used, the third pair of socks, the book they were going to read. They keep walking the same route. They stop carrying the parts of it that weren't doing anything.

Nothing gets erased in that transaction, and the past doesn't leave either. What can be put down is the freight — the rehearsing, the explaining, the low-level bracing for a thing that has already happened. The route stays. The pack gets lighter.