Why I Had to Go Back

For a long time, I believed healing meant moving on.

Closing chapters. Locking doors. Declaring myself "over it."

I thought that surviving those moments was enough. That I had "overcome" by simply making it through.

And to be fair—that worked, until it didn't.

What I eventually learned is that closing a door doesn't mean a room disappears. It just means you stop visiting it. And rooms we stop visiting don't stop shaping us.

They shape how we love. How we parent. How we rest. How we speak to ourselves when no one else is listening.

They shape how we allow others to treat us and the value we place on our own ability to take up space.

But going back didn't mean I had to relive everything the same way I lived it the first time. That's the fear I felt before I went back. What it actually meant was revisiting the rooms with context I didn't have before.

Adult eyes. Language. Boundaries. Choice.

The bravest thing I did wasn't confronting the past head-on. It was allowing myself to enter slowly—to sit down instead of sprinting through, to notice instead of judge.

Most rooms softened once I saw them clearly. Some needed grieving. Some needed forgiveness. And some just needed to be acknowledged for the role they played.

Every room needed the perspective that I not only survived what happened there, but that I have the power and knowledge to understand it's over. That I am safe. That it is not happening now. And that I won't let it happen again.

I didn't go back to punish myself. I went back to reclaim parts of me that had been left behind.

If you're avoiding a room right now, I want you to know this: You don't go back because you're stuck. You go back because you're ready to live forward with less weight.

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