I know there is something you have been carrying, heavy and unspoken,
a quiet weight pressed into the marrow of your bones.
You have named it regret, but it is something older than that.
It is the echo of every moment you wish you could rewrite,
every word you wish you could pull back from the air,
every road you now see you should have taken instead.
But hear me now—The past is not a prison.
It does not hold you, chain you, bind you to its walls.
You do.
You are the keeper of your own cage,
feeding it with whispers of should-haves and what-ifs,
polishing the bars with shame.
And it has become so familiar, this self-punishment,
you have mistaken it for atonement.
Do you see it now?
How you have made a home in your own undoing?
How you have called yourself undeserving, unworthy,
as if mistakes were a measure of who you are,
as if learning were not the point of living?
Let me tell you a secret:
Every scar you carry is proof that you have lived.
Every wrong turn was still a road,
and every fall taught you how to rise.
You are not meant to be perfect—you are meant to become.
And yet, here you stand, clenching old versions of yourself
as if they define you, as if the person who hurt,
who failed, who didn’t know better is the only version that matters.
But that person is gone.
The you of then is not the you of now.
You have grown, you have changed, and you have punished yourself enough.
You have spent countless nights replaying the past, trying to undo what has already been lived.
But the past is unchanging, and you—you have evolved beyond it.
You have faced yourself, learned the lessons, and carried them forward.
It is time to stop proving your remorse with suffering.
It is time to let go of this prison.
So here is your choice:
Keep the past as a wound, or let it be a lesson.
Keep punishing yourself, or finally set yourself free.
Forgive yourself—not because you are excusing what has been done,
but because healing begins with acceptance.
Because holding onto the past does not change it, because you have already paid the price in sorrow, in self-doubt, and now, now it is time to allow yourself to rise.
It is time to reclaim your life, to step into the present without the shadow of yesterday dulling your light.
Put down the weight that you have carried for so many years.
Walk forward.
And don’t look back.
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