In life, you only make two decisions: to move forward or go backwards. Coming up with a choice between the two requires strength, courage and bravery. Because once you decided, there should be no more turning back.
And that's the difficult part. Picking which way to go is like choosing between your mom and dad. For some, it might be easy; but for others, it's not. To others, their pasts and futures are definitely hard to let go.
To be honest, there's only one way to go: move forward. You can never go backwards because that would make your life completely stagnant, eventually useless. One cannot live in the past for so long. It is mandatory to move on.
But who said you cannot look back? In the Philippines, we have a saying that goes: Ang hindi marunong lumingon sa pinanggalingan, hindi makakarating sa paroroonan. (He who doesn't know how to look back from where he came from will never get to his destination) And I think it's right. We cannot discard anything that happened in our lives. Our past, no matter how dark it might be, will always be a huge part of our future. It will either be a reminder of what you should not do, or a beautiful inspiration that will push you forward. We shouldn't go back to it, there's no way we can. But at least, let's look at it from time to time.