Why we repeat the same mistakes even when everything has changed
New job, new city, new person. And three months in, you hear your own voice say the old sentence.
At the start, everything is clean. You tell yourself this time it's different, and you really believe it. Then one evening you're staying after everyone else, saying "no problem" when there is one, rounding off a sentence before you say it. Same knot in the stomach, same scene, different backdrop. It hurts me a little, because you really did change everything.
Maybe what travels with you is the way you arrive: the first reflex when you walk in, the one that served you once, somewhere, and starts on its own before you choose. So when it comes back, you blame yourself, as if you had missed something, when you had moved everything except that.
You moved everything except the way you arrive.
I was wondering…
What would you get to feel, on a day with nothing left to prove?