Growth is your decision
Interia — 214
There comes a time when the mirror doesn’t lie anymore, and you stop being the story of what happened to you.
Beneath the anger, shame, guilt, and blame, there’s love and understanding. But you have to abandon your protective instincts and narratives so you can feel your way forward.
It can happen on any quiet, ordinary Tuesday. Don’t wait for wounds to heal or memories to fade, for someone to finally apologise or when you find the perfect explanation in a self-help book. It’s for when you catch yourself mid-excuse; you realise you’re tired of your voice repeating the same sad story.
“I am this way because…” will eventually become the most expensive sentence you’ll speak. It’ll cost you tomorrow, and the next day, and every possibility waiting beyond your maintained walls and narratives. If you catalogue your wounds like they’re trophies or shields or weapons—as reasons why you couldn’t, shouldn’t, or wouldn’t change—you’ll make the past your prison. Life will feel like it has no meaning or point as scepticism takes over.
So, growth is what you do when it’s 3am and you’re on your phone, avoiding sleep. It’s what you do next when you hear yourself repeating the same complaints from five years ago, saying, “I’ve always felt this way. It’s just who I am”. And it’s what sits heavy in your chest when you realise you turned into someone you swore never to be.
The truth is simple: after a certain point, you’re not just the sum of what happened to you. You’re the choices you make about what to do with it.
You don’t have to act like the past never shaped you. But with this clay foundation you now have between your hands, what will you decide to build or reconstruct with it?
Some days, we prefer crawling back into our familiar stories. The ones where we’re either the victim, the survivor, or the one who had it harder than others. And maybe you did. Maybe your story is legitimately tragic, genuinely unfair. But at some point, the story becomes just a cage with an open door you just refuse to walk through.
It’s choosing curiosity or certainty. Do you walk through and leave the misery behind? Do you ask, “What else could I be?” or say, “But what else could I be? This is all I am.” Do you lean into the terrifying but exhilarating tension, knowing you have more power than you’ve been pretending to have?
The person you were never shown how to be is always in there. Not as some mystical potential, but as a series of small choices that create you. The choice to respond differently this time. To set a boundary you've never set. To pursue something that scares you. To admit you were wrong. To try again.
Your past is real. Your pain is valid. Your struggles matter. But they're not you unless you keep choosing them, day after day, excuse after excuse.
The mirror doesn't lie anymore. When you look at yourself tomorrow morning, you'll see exactly who you've decided to be. Not who your parents raised, who your experiences shaped, who your circumstances forced you to become.
Just you. The author of your becoming.
Growth is your decision. Every single day.