I am done letting painful thoughts of the past occupy space in my head.

Thoughts do not evict well. Force one out and it gets louder, in the same way that telling yourself not to listen for a sound in the night guarantees you will hear it.

What does work is not arguing. The painful thought arrives, you notice it arriving, you decline the invitation to go through the whole business again, and you return to whatever you were doing. It comes back. You decline again.

None of that feels like victory, and for the first fifty times it barely feels like anything. But a thought fed less often does come round less often, and the space it used to occupy quietly turns into something else.