When You Hate Yourself for Revisiting Old Wounds

You revisit old wounds for the same reason
birds will come back to the places
their nests have been destroyed
The mind walks into the same room
because it wants to know how to fix
those floorboards, paint the walls,
turn this into a more habitable place
if it tries something different from the last time.
This is survival.
This is learning how to live through pain
once the skeletons have decided to walk out
of the closet and refuse to go back in again.
Call it the worst story you have ever owned,
a car crash within your bones
that you cannot stop staring at.
But the only way to understand pain
is to look at it and feel it
without turning away.
There is no shame in this.
Eventually, it will scab over and heal.

Nikita Gill