Dear Self,

I am slowly unlearning pain. For years, it was the language I spoke, the map I followed, the rhythm of every step I took. Pain taught me to guard myself, to question love, to doubt kindness, to prepare for endings before beginnings could even bloom. And though I never asked for it, I obeyed it, because survival demanded it.

But now I see the danger in carrying pain as a compass. It points only to places I’ve already been, never to where I might yet go. It tells me to build walls instead of homes, to carry armor instead of tenderness, to fear what is soft when softness is what I’ve always longed for.

So I am learning, little by little, how to put it down. Not by forgetting what happened, but by refusing to let it shape everything that is still to come. I am teaching myself that not every silence is rejection, not every goodbye is betrayal, and not every love will end in breaking.

This work is not easy. My body remembers the ache too well. It flinches at joy, it doubts peace, it questions laughter as though it cannot possibly be mine to keep. Yet each time I resist the old reflex, each time I let light in without fear of its leaving, I rewrite what pain once taught me.

I know I will stumble. I will fall back into old patterns, listen again to the familiar whisper of fear. But I also know this: I am no longer only what I survived. My scars no longer warn me of danger—they remind me of healing. They remind me that even broken things can be mended, that even in darkness I learned how to rise.

And so, I will keep unlearning. I will keep choosing love without apology, joy without suspicion, rest without bracing for loss. I will keep reminding myself that to live is not to suffer, and to breathe is not to endure, but to feel fully, freely, without the shadow of yesterday deciding the light of tomorrow.

If unlearning pain is slow, then so be it. Because every step forward is a step toward freedom. And freedom, I am beginning to understand, is worth everything I once carried.

With love and courage,

ANA 💋