bury it before it rots your soul

“Are they still hurting you, or have you just gotten used to holding on to the pain?”

A friend asked me this a few weeks ago, and I haven’t been able to shake it. It made me pause, and I despised that pause because it meant I had to still and confront something I was never capable of. How many things am I keeping alive just because I have grown accustomed to them? Just because they told a good story.

People who left. Disappointments that refused to be cried over. Opportunities that never worked out. Versions of my life that never came to be—so many things. The horror passed by, but its hand remained on my shoulder. Years passed. Those things stopped happening. Everyone moved on, and I kept making old bets, wagering my future on stories that had already ended.

That’s the thing about certain wounds.

If you don’t bury them, you end up building a home around them.

So, bury it before it rots your soul.

Bury it before it creeps into your identity and changes the way you see the world. Bury it before joy becomes something fragile. Before hope turns into grief and grief becomes something you carry everywhere. Bury it before it changes you into someone you can barely recognise in the mirror.

I didn’t bury it. I am trying so hard to bury it, but I am still holding on.

I can feel parts of myself beginning to rot. The kindness I saw in the world has been replaced by suspicion. The pride I held for my hometown has turned to a crooked lens, one that only looks for how to exit. Yet, I still hold on.

I often felt like life was happening to everyone else and not to me, because I was standing still, revisiting old stories and carrying old versions of myself as though they were still alive.

When you hold on to something for long enough, it becomes who you are.

You hold on to an idea of yourself. The definition you gave yourself to survive. You become attached to that identity because it explains everything. It explains your fears. Your disappointments. Your habits. It gives meaning to your pain.

I lost years of my life because I couldn’t let go. I couldn’t move because I was too busy revisiting the past. Trying to understand it. Trying to protect it. Trying to keep it safe.

But, safety is just another way of refusing to let go.

And you can keep something safe, but you can’t hinder it from eventually rotting.

That friend’s question stayed with me because it forced me to confront something I didn’t want to admit. Not everything that was hurting me was still happening. Some of it was being kept alive by me.

I was returning to old wounds long after they had stopped bleeding. I was introducing myself through stories that no longer reflected who I was. I was waiting for life to begin while life was already happening.

The truth is, I had a hand in keeping myself stuck.

And that realisation felt freeing.

Because if I had a hand in keeping myself there, then I also had a hand in leaving.

So I am deciding to bury it.

So I can move on, so I can accept that it has reached the end of its life and allow myself to continue with mine.

You don’t have to forgive everyone who hurt you. You don’t have to make peace with every part of your past, but forgive yourself.

Forgive yourself for staying too long, then let yourself discover who you are outside of being safe, because you deserve a life that is bigger than the things that hurt you.

And, I am discovering that the most loving thing I can do for myself is bury what has already lived its life. What has already grown tired. What no longer has room to bloom and is left only to rot.