My heart is aching and my spirit is broken, I am on my knees, depleted and defeated. I wanted to give up but there’s a tiny part of me that still whispers hold on for dear life; my faith has been shaken, my faith, the most precious thing I ever had and my life has been split into fragments I can’t seem to put back together.
Yes, this is so painful and yes it seems hopeless, but no, it rarely is. Sometimes, panic is a reminder that we still want to hope for the things we’ve lost hope for, and tragedy is a reminder that we can still feel in a world that doesn’t want us to. Sometimes, when we feel like we’re sleeping our way through life, we’re really reawakening to the truth. It’s never easy taking the red pill or casting light on the shadows of the cave you once mistook reality for, but sometimes, it’s a necessary evil we swallow, because each trapdoor could be the portal to the path that leads us anywhere but here.
The truth is, grieving is never a straight line, it comes full circle and we might be forced to live through it again and again. Healing is never linear, it’s a maze of distortions, confusion, smoke and mirrors, pain that was never spoken and invisible scars, battle wounds that never made it to the surface. The worst wars may be fought alone and in your own head.
Healing has no timeline, no deadline, and no concrete measure like pills in a cup – in fact, forcing yourself to heal or comparing your healing to others is a prescription for poison rather than a cure. Sometimes healing comes in a quiet silence or a less shaky breath when you speak. Sometimes it’s the courage to walk outdoors and confront the demons that don’t exist. Sometimes healing comes in the tiny moments that no one ever thinks to say “thank you” for. And sometimes, the best way to heal is to know that there are some things that cannot be healed, won’t be healed or aren’t meant to be healed in the ways we think they are – they’re meant to be channeled and transformed.
The truth is, what feels like your crucifixion doesn’t have any quick fixes, only slow movements in a never ending dance. Time or words alone can’t always soothe the wounds that can’t be put into language. Trauma can speak in a foreign tongue and weave its code into every cell – this is the type of pain where the body and the mind both keep the score. Sometimes the only band-aids you have are platitudes mixed with raw truth – the days where you feel like you won’t survive and the days where you learn you can, and all the beautifully horrific moments in between.
The shock of the pain may never fully go away, it’s just numbed and buried beneath tombs, beneath new memories, waiting to erupt through the cracks and crevices left open in your thoughts. Thoughts that wrap around your body like a choke-hold, never seeming to let go. But in these thoughts, there are gaps, opportunities to interrupt the old tapes playing in the background, frozen in time.
That’s because experiencing overwhelming pain doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to sketch new thoughts, or paint new memories, because pain can be as transformative as the art on a torn canvas. It can make you appreciate all the small joys you’d never think to relish. You are forced to remember the things you took for granted, the ones that appeared minuscule, and realize their larger-than-life roles in the grand scheme of things. In truth, pain is the excuse you needed to embrace all you have to be grateful for and all the things you fear losing so much you’ll now work even harder to keep.
Because when you feel like you’re dying, a life of pain reminds you to savor the things that matter, the things that are left worth fighting for.
Breathe just breathe, because when you breathe through what you’ve been through and remember all the days that you survived and all the days you didn’t want to, you’ll remember the brief moments that were so important, the quick snapshots of your life that delayed you burying your head in the sand, never to come out again. The ones that made you use the voice you silenced – the voice trapped within for years. The strange happenings that made you smile for the first time in weeks, the rare kindness of strangers who lent a hand, or the surprising reminders that God still laughs even when you’ve forgotten how.
Don’t worry if one day, the pain seems to be at a standstill and you forget the old narratives running through your head, or if you rewrite your story even before you’ve lived another tale. Don’t be afraid of your own powerlessness, and don’t be afraid of your own power.
In the worst moments of your life, it’s helpful to remember that when a chrysalis appears to shake violently, it’s actually not breaking, it’s warding off predators – and that sometimes when it turns black, it’s actually unfolding into something new. Destruction can be the incentive for creation and self-protection. Crucifixion, the pathway for resurrection.
The pause in between, a much-needed hibernation that happens before rising once more.
Yet change isn’t always so immediate, or easy or even gratifying or desirable. Sometimes, change comes on a slow spin of the world on its axis and gravity is the only thing keeping you grounded. Even the most glorious changes are excessively painful during the time we go through them. We don’t look back at those deaths the same way we do when we’re in the midst of dying – we don’t see them as rebirths, we see them as cruel fates we are undeserving of.
But be sure that one day in the future there will be the privilege of more awakenings and of more happiness than you can capture in photographs; new growing pains and new first drafts. Rest assured that if you do not give up now, you’ll get to change the course of everything that’s still unwritten.
Healing is a process. Something doesn’t just end and you accept it.
Healing is a process. It’s takes you understanding why something didn’t work out. It takes learning that some people just aren’t meant for you.
In your head that’s easy. You can say it over and over again but when your heart is conflicted, logic and what makes sense doesn’t seem to anymore.
Tore between what you know is right and what you want to be right you’re stuck in this limbo of wanting to move back to a time when things were different. Where the possibility of a future seemed real. Suddenly you realize any next steps towards the future are ones you’re taking alone. So you stand still not knowing where to go.
That’s healing.
Healing is a process. It’s loving someone but loving them enough to let them be. Even when you don’t want to.
Then acceptance comes. With the things you can’t change, you’re forced to move on.
Maybe you’ve noticed her pull away a bit. Maybe you don’t talk like you used to. Maybe she doesn’t blowup your newsfeed nor do you do the same. Maybe you know she’s hurting.
Desesperately trying to fix herself. Find herself. Heal.
Maybe she’s growing distant because she’s trying to heal.
And as much as she’d love to talk to you or tell you things, she’s gotta put her phone down.
She reminds herself, “if they wanted to be with me they would be.”
“If they, specially she want to talk to me, she can call, she will answer the damn phone and will say to me I LOVE YOU AND MISS YOU .... But, it's been already more than 4 years that she say, I HATE YOU.”
Maybe you don’t realize she’s trying to distance herself.
But when you do realize it and when you start to miss her too…stop.
Don’t make it harder for her than it needs to be.
Don’t ask her how she is. Don’t check in.
Everything about you reminds her of things that couldn’t be.
So when you see her and she doesn’t smile like she used to, when she doesn’t talk to you the way she used to, when she doesn’t look at you the way she used to, it isn’t because she doesn’t care.
The truth is she cares about you more than anyone in her life.
But she can’t keep holding onto something that hurts as bad as it does.
The hardest lesson we will ever learn is when to let go and when to try harder.
She’s growing distant because she needs to because she needs to know what a life is like without you and she hates the idea of it.
There sadness to becoming strangers with someone who knows you better than most. But there’s greater sadness trying to keep someone who isn’t meant for you. And the greatest sadness of all is losing yourself to someone else.
So when she pulls away or doesn’t answer or tries to ignore you, don’t take it personally. Take it as she needs to heal. She deserves to heal.
When you leave everything you know behind, you will hurt people. You don’t want to hurt these people, but it’s an inevitability. You will be soaked in the guilt of knowing that you’re doing what’s right for you but not for them. You will hear Regina Spektor’s “Small Town Moon” play over and over in your head.
“How can I leave without hurting everyone that made me?/How can I leave without hurting everyone that made me?”
You will try to imagine a life without the people who molded and shaped you. You soon realize you can not only imagine this kind of life but live it.
You will wonder if you’re making the right choice? How could a choice that was supposed to be relieving and filled with possibility be so detrimental and scarring for others? You will not be able to answer these questions.
But you will do your best to be gentle with the people hurting. You will assure them. You will do your best.
When you leave everything you know behind, you will get lonely. The kind of loneliness that is palpable. You will hang up pictures. You will surround yourself with the faces of the people who know you best. You’ll stare at these pictures and pray to God no one forgets you. Before you unpack your dishes, you’ll set up the perfect guest room. You’ll put out fresh towels and linens and make the bed just right–just in case anyone wants to come visit this summer.
You will walk your dognd you will cry. You will second-guess why you did this. You will wonder if you’ll ever make friends. You will miss your friends to the point where you can no longer stand. You will kneel on the sidewalk. You will take a deep breath. You will let the loneliness pass through you with the bay breeze. You will stand.
When you leave everything you know behind, you will feel liberated. You will feel brave and proud and strong. You left behind comfort for adventure. You are fucking brave. You dug into the dirt and pulled your roots out with both hands. You replanted them in a place filled with scary unknowns. You took a risk. You leapt blindly into the darkness. And in this darkness, no one knows you. No one knows your past. No one knows your memories tainted with loss and gut-punching sadness–the kind of sadness that you can physically feel course through your veins. The kind of sadness that smothered you until you couldn’t breathe. These ghosts are still attached to your life, but they are no longer living in the same room as you. They are still in your heart, but they will feel lighter. You will feel lighter.
When you leave everything you know behind, you will change. You will feel humbled. You will feel small. You will feel strong. You will get to know yourself on entirely different level (all that alone time, y’know?). You will be intentional with friendships. You will miss what you used to call home. You will call home. You will explore. You will open yourself up. You will adapt. You will survive. You will feel lost. You will wonder when this place will stop feeling like a vacation. You will yearn for familiarity. You will learn how strong and resilient you really are. You will grow. You will realize that everything you left behind is really everything that made you who you are today–and you will keep those people and those places in the safest space of your heart where they can never get hurt.
Small Town Moon
Regina Spektor
I must've lived a thousand times
But every day begins the same
'Cause there's a small town in my mind
How can I leave without hurting everyone that made me?
How can I leave without hurting everyone that made me?
Oh, baby, baby, it's all about the moon
I wish you wouldn't have broken my camera
'Cause we're gonna get real old real soon
Today we're younger than we ever gonna be
Today we're younger than we ever gonna be
Woo!
Today we're younger than we ever gonna be
Stop, stop, what's the hurry?
Come on, baby, don't you worry, worry
Everybody not so nice, nice
Everybody not so nice, nice
Stop, stop, what's the hurry?
Come on, baby, don't you worry, worry
Everybody not so nice, nice
Everybody not so nice, nice
Thought you ought to know by now
I thought you ought to know by now
Everybody not so nice, nice
Everybody not so nice, nice
Oh, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby
Baby, baby, baby, baby it's all about the moon
I must've lived a thousand times
But there's a small town in my mind
How can I leave without hurting everyone that made me?
How can I leave without hurting everyone that made me?
Woo!
How can I leave without hurting everyone that made me?
Oh, how can I leave without hurting everyone that made me?
Oh oh!
How can I leave without hurting everyone that made me?
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