Story

Old habits die hard, they say.
Not because they are strong—but because they are familiar.
Every habit lived in my mind as a picture.
A frozen frame from the past: the same room, the same silence, the same thoughts looping like an old film. I didn’t realize I was replaying images, not reality. Those pictures once kept me safe. They helped me survive moments when I didn’t know how to move forward.
Nostalgia crept in quietly.
It wasn’t happiness—it was recognition. A soft ache for the person I used to be, doing their best with limited strength and limited choices. I felt it when the mind returned to old routines, old reactions, old comforts that no longer fit.
Then I understood something simple but powerful:
old habits are made of old pictures.
So I began changing the pictures.
One moment at a time. A new scene replaced the old—me choosing awareness instead of fear, stillness instead of noise, breath instead of panic. Each new image shattered the old habit into a million pieces, like glass dissolving into light.
The nostalgia didn’t disappear.
It transformed.
It became gratitude—for the past that shaped me, and for the present that allowed me to let go. Old habits no longer haunted me. They stood quietly behind me,