Was I wrong? — the question you ask yourself thirty times a day

Eleven at night. Lights off. The ceiling fan turning just slowly enough to hear it brushing the air. I lie there, eyes open, hand on my belly.

And the trial begins again.

The plaintiff is me. The defendant is also me. The judge — me. The witnesses I summon one by one: what they said back in April, the text I replied to too late, the evening I stayed silent instead of asking one question. The trial goes until two in the morning, no verdict, then adjourned. Tomorrow night, continued.

If tonight you're lying like that too — I know the feeling. The feeling that your head is no longer yours, but a courtroom with no exit.

This piece doesn't answer "was I wrong." I don't know if you were wrong. Honestly, I don't think anyone does, not even the other person. This piece is about something else: why asking endlessly leads nowhere, and what to do with that loop — tonight.

Why the mind sets up a courtroom every night

During the day, there are things to hide behind. Emails to reply to, lunch to eat, someone asking "are you free this weekend." When the head is busy, the pain gets pushed under, lying still.

Night leaves nowhere to hide.

But here's what I want to be clear about: that courtroom isn't you being weak. It's the mind doing exactly what it was born to do — find the cause.

The mind learns from causes. Touch a hot kettle, it records "kettle — hot — don't touch again," and next time you don't get burned. That mechanism saves lives. So when something big hurts you, it switches on exactly like that: find the cause, find it and next time you won't hurt.

The only problem is this time it's trying to find the cause of a person. And a person is not a kettle.

The cost of a trial where you play all three roles

A real trial has a stopping point because three different people are involved. The plaintiff presents then sits. The defendant gets to speak. The judge hears both sides, rules, and once ruled it's done.

In your head, all three roles are one person. So on a tired night, the judge rules against you. On an angry night, the judge rules against them. On a night you miss them, the whole trial self-destructs and you go looking for reasons to forgive.

Three different verdicts for the same case, just because you slept differently on those three nights.

"Why did I let that happen?" — I asked myself that for nearly a year. Until one evening I tried a different question: "If my closest friend told me the exact same story, would I scrutinize every one of their texts?"

I wouldn't. I'd pour them a glass of water and say: this one was hard.

Asking endlessly doesn't lead to an answer — so where does it lead

Three places. And none of them is where you want to go.

First: the old story can't age. A wound heals when left alone. But this one you reopen every night, flip through each page, then close. It's not that you haven't healed. It's that it hasn't been left alone long enough to heal.

Second: you're still with them. Cross-examination requires an opposing party. So every night you reconstruct them in your head — their voice, the way they raised an eyebrow when they disagreed, the words they'd say if you said this. You've moved all their things out of the house. But you rebuild them every night, with your own hands.

Third, and this is the most painful part: "was I wrong" usually isn't the real question. The real question sits underneath, and it sounds like this: am I someone worth staying for?

Those are two entirely different questions. The first asks about a chain of events. The second asks about your worth as a person. And the nightly trial isn't trying any case at all — it's trying you.

It took me nearly a year to see this. And seeing it didn't fix everything immediately: some nights I still lay there, still flipping back to April. It's just that now I recognize what I'm doing, a little sooner. Some nights ten minutes sooner. Some nights not at all.

Closing the courtroom without needing a verdict

This is what I most want to say: you don't need a verdict to move forward.

The opposite idea sounds very logical, which is why it's hard to let go. It says: you have to know where you went wrong first, then fix it, then rest assured it won't happen again. Sounds like responsibility. Sounds like maturity.

But taking responsibility and self-prosecution are two different things. And the biggest difference is: taking responsibility has a stopping point.

If the right column sounds familiar, that's fine. Almost everyone lives there for a while. The problem is only when you stay too long — it becomes a mental habit, and habits don't leave on their own — they have to be replaced by a different habit.

The courtroom in your head doesn't close with a verdict. It closes when the plaintiff drops the case.

Three lines is intentional. Writing ten lines isn't taking responsibility anymore — it's reopening the trial on paper. Three lines force you to choose — and being able to choose means you understand the situation better than you thought.

And the paper in the drawer does one small thing I didn't expect: the next night, when the old question rises, you have somewhere to point it. That, I already wrote down. It's in the drawer. That sentence doesn't make the pain disappear. It just takes away the courtroom's reason to convene.

One thing you can do tonight

If ten minutes with a piece of paper is too much for tonight, then just this one thing.

When the thought "was I wrong" rises — and it will — swap it for a different question:

How far have I come in understanding this?

They sound alike. But the two questions go in opposite directions. The first demands a verdict, and verdicts don't deliver themselves. The second asks about an ongoing process, and it always has an answer — even the answer "today I haven't understood anything new."

Let one breath sink to your belly. Then answer that question, quietly, no need for eloquence.

If tonight you can't do anything at all — no paper, no replacement question, nothing — that's fine too. Some nights the only thing you can do is lie there until morning. That night doesn't count as failure. It's just a night.

Gently. No rush.

When to find a professional

This piece is something to do while waiting for morning. It doesn't replace treatment, and I don't promise it'll make you lighter — many people feel lighter, some don't.

Here are signs it's time to bring this to a professional, instead of carrying it alone:

• You have trouble falling asleep, or wake in the middle of the night, for weeks on end
• You can't eat, or can't stop eating, and your weight noticeably drops or rises
• You can't do normal things you used to do — going to work, showering, tidying up
• You think about hurting yourself, even if it's just a passing thought

That last one doesn't wait. Tell someone you trust, that very night. The Emergency Support page spells out what is always true at times like that.

Seeing a professional isn't a sign you're worse off than others. It's like going to the doctor when your leg has been hurting for three weeks without improving — just a reasonable thing to do.

Before you turn off the light

That trial will have a night when it doesn't convene. Not because you won, and not because you lost. The plaintiff just didn't show up that day.

The case file still sits there. You still remember April, still remember what they said. Nobody erases it and nobody needs to.

It's just that the hallway light turns on, the courtroom door opens, and you step outside. The hallway is cool. Outside, it's almost dawn.

If you'd like to read more, two pieces stand close to this one: Letting go isn't forgetting — it's no longer carrying talks about the space between remembering something and carrying it every day, and Learning to talk to yourself like a close friend talks about exactly the voice playing judge in your head.

I hope tonight is a little lighter than last night. Just a little.

This article was created with AI assistance.