"don't ever look back", they say!
our simulations only ever run in one direction - call it forward, call it additive/accretive, call it evolution.
they say this in part to an emergent sense of self, getting comfortable in a new plane of existence. for that new-ish sense of self to look back over its shoulder at its own timeline *is to experience itself vanishing*. looking backwards at its history, it sees its yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that, *concluding* (apparently, as in "by appearance") with an event which - played backwards - is a vanishing.
time is a useful, if hazardous, device.
if you're going to look at it backwards, try also *feeling* it backwards. if you don't manually invert the emotion, then you're going to default to the experience of winking out - which is to say, you're going to default to the experience of seeing *someone else* winking out. that's not a *thing* for you, the self-observer. you can only ever emerge. it's a one-way process.