YOUR PAST IS A BRUISE. NOT A TATTOO. It marked you. Of course it did. You'd have to be made of stone for it not to. But a bruise is not permanent. It's not identity. It's not destiny. It's evidence that something hit you hard enough to leave a mark — and that you were alive enough to feel it. The problem isn't the bruise. The problem is spending years pressing on it and calling that self-awareness. Revisiting it. Retelling it. Reintroducing yourself with it. Hi, I'm the person this happened to. That's not healing. That's haunting yourself. Your past is information. It shaped you, sharpened you, showed you things about life and people and yourself that nothing else could have. But it does not get to be the headline. It doesn't get to be the reason. And it definitely doesn't get to be the ceiling. You are not what happened to you. You are what you chose to become once you realised you had a choice. That's the only story worth telling now.