The Habit of Hurting Myself Twice
Regret hides beneath performance. It wears improvement like a mask. The moment you stop performing for forgiveness, the shadow finally tells the truth about what it wanted all along.
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I knew it was wrong
when the silence felt familiar.
Still, I walked in,
hands steady,
heart rehearsed.
I called it fate
so I wouldn’t have to call it choice.
Later, I blamed the mirror.
Said it looked too much like mercy.
But the truth is,
I liked the punishment.
It felt like home.
“Regret fades slower when you keep proving it right.”
There’s a quiet cruelty in knowing better and doing it again. I used to see that as weakness. Now it feels more like habit. The nervous system doesn’t label our choices; it memorizes what kept us alive. When chaos once meant safety, the body keeps walking toward it long after the mind pleads for peace.
Regret begins in thought and settles in flesh. It tightens the throat before you answer a message you shouldn’t. It shortens the breath before you agree out of fear. Each repetition invites regret to watch from the corner, pleased that the old script still performs. It doesn’t punish. It keeps score.
Breaking that loop happens slowly. The body resists calm because calm feels foreign. Change shakes the spine before it steadies it. Healing grows in the moments you stop chasing apology through the same walls that cut you. In the pause where pain no longer earns love.
I still reach for what hurt me. It’s embarrassing. Awareness comes as tension before it becomes choice. Each pause before reply, each urge that dies quietly, returns a second that once belonged to the past. That’s how regret loosens, through repetition denied.
I’ve poured everything into this. Healing Thoughts II: 33 Poems and Meditations for Emotional Renewal is up for order now. These pages carry the deepest, sharpest work I’ve done, and I can’t wait for them to be in your hands.
When you notice yourself reaching for the same pain, what story are you trying to keep alive?
If you’re peeling back wounds like this one,
the 365-Day Shadow Work Journals were made for moments like these.
They speak the same language you do. Truth before comfort.
Explore the journals →
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If this hit a nerve, you’re not alone. Healing Thoughts is where I say the quiet parts loudly. If you’re not subscribed yet, now’s the time. It’s only getting rawer from here.
“Man is not what he thinks he is, he is what he hides.” —André Malraux, Antimémoires (1967)