My past was a private obstacle, not a public excuse.
A name is so important. A surname connects you to your past, to your family. Even a given name has meaning - why did your parents pick that particular one?
God, I loved him. I could insist I was okay with just being friends, that I'd find someone else and get over him, but I was fooling myself. There was no getting past this. I loved him, and fifty years from now we could be married to other people, never exchanged so much as a kiss, and I'd still looking into his eyes and know he was the one. He'd always be the one.
Einstein theorized that time travel was possible, but he was looking at it as unidirectional, going forward. Traveling into the past is much more problematic, as countless stories have demonstrated!