how to stop thinking about something?

i am 41 years old and i am a woman and i am so damn tired of my own brain!!! ten years ago i cheated on my husband and yeah i know how that sounds and i know what people think and honestly i have thought it all myself a thousand times already!!! it was one stupid messy year of my life when i felt invisible and angry and bored and selfish and i made a choice that still sticks to me like gum on a shoe!!! my husband never found out and before you ask yes that fact alone makes me feel like a fake grown adult with a mortgage and a calm smile and a dirty secret!!! i go to work i cook dinner i pay bills i say thank you and sorry and good morning like a normal person while my head randomly screams remember that thing you did!!! it pops up when i am folding laundry or driving or brushing my teeth and i just want my brain to shut the hell up!!! i have read articles i have heard therapists say forgive yourself and move on and yeah sure sounds cute in theory!!! i even wrote it down once like some motivational crap from a podcast quote “you are not your worst mistake” and i laughed because wow that felt fake!!! i am rude to myself about it all the time and i replay the nights and the lies and the thrill and the shame and i hate that part of me and also hate that i cannot delete it!!! how do you stop thinking about something when your mind treats it like unpaid debt!!! do you ever feel like you already served the sentence but your brain keeps adding years!!!

i am trying though and i want to say that out loud because maybe someone needs to hear it!!! i am trying to stop beating myself with the same stick every damn day!!! i remind myself that ten years is a long time and i am not that woman anymore even if she still lives in my memory!!! i remind myself that guilt is not the same as accountability and that endless punishment is not noble it is just dumb!!! sometimes i literally say out loud shut up already and it helps a bit!!! sometimes i tell myself this is not useful thinking and i move on like a tired manager closing a bad meeting!!! i think about how many good years i have given my marriage since then and how many honest moments exist now!!! i read somewhere maybe in a random book or a stupid tweet that said “thoughts are just thoughts not commands” and yeah that stuck with me!!! i am hopeful in a quiet stubborn way!!! i think healing is boring and slow and annoying and not poetic at all!!! but maybe stopping the thinking is not about erasing it and more about not feeding it!!! so i ask you reading this do you have something old and rotten that your brain drags out for no reason!!! do you also want to move the hell on and live!!! if so maybe we both start today and decide that enough is enough!!! because honestly life is short and i am done letting one bad chapter act like the whole damn book!!!

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