There’s a kind of ache that doesn’t bleed anymore but still begs to be touched.
That’s what he became, the scab. The one I kept picking.
Not because I loved the pain.
But because, somehow, reopening it felt safer than letting it disappear.

He wasn’t the wound.
He was the illusion of closure, a temporary shield over something much deeper.
Something I didn’t want to face.

Maybe, deep down, I wasn’t really reaching for him.
Maybe I was still reaching for the one before.
The one who broke me so quietly I never heard myself shatter.
And in my confusion, I told myself that touching the scab would somehow bring the ghost back to life.
Like maybe if I could just feel something, I wouldn’t feel so abandoned by everything.

But that’s not healing. That’s self harm with pretty hands.

Because neither of them held me with intention.
They were both just moments.
One cut me wide open.
The other… came with bandages but no stitching thread.

And I kept going back.
Again. And again.
Not because it felt good, but because it felt familiar.

But now I see it for what it is:
Every time I return to what isn’t mine, I delay what’s trying to find me.
Every time I revisit what I already survived, I push away what could actually heal me.

I don’t want to carry pain just because I’m used to the weight.
I don’t want to keep holding onto half love, half-effort, half-meaning.
I want wholeness.
I want peace that doesn’t ask me to beg for it.
I want to wake up one day and not remember how it felt to constantly ache for someone who never reached back.

So I’m done picking the scab.

I’m letting it heal; all of it.
Not into something hard and bitter, but into something sacred.
Something soft again. Mine again.

Because I deserve to be found, and seen; by someone who doesn’t have to hurt me first.

And I can’t receive that if I’m still clinging to what already let me go.

So this chapter ends like this:

Not with fire. Not with screaming. Not with closure.
But with me , choosing peace over patterns.
Choosing me over memory.