Healing

It has been well over a year and I can proudly say that I am still healing. Healing - the process of making or becoming sound or healthy again. But healing is so much more than that. Healing is not becoming the best version of yourself. Healing is letting the worst version of yourself be loved. Healing is one day feeling like you’re on top of the world: unstoppable, invincible, worthy. And the next feeling entirely defeated: depleted, broken. Like every unhealthy habit or traumatic experience you worked so damn hard to overcome comes rushing back all at once. The progress you feel you’ve made goes right out the window. Healing is saying “every single version of me deserves love. Deserves tenderness. Deserves grace.” Healing is when you can get to a place where we see and can emphasize with every version of ourselves, even the version of ourselves that we can sometimes be ashamed of. And that’s what people don’t understand about healing, it’s a lonely rollercoaster. So many of us have turned healing into becoming this super perfect version of ourselves. That is bondage. That is anxiety waiting to happen. I’m a soft lover. I have spent my fair share of grieving rose tinted futures with gray scaled people. And then being hard on myself for giving away too much. But over the past year and a half, I have realized that the brutal end I experienced was a shame, but not a loss. Because I realized I was the reason that future was rose tinted. It was my softness, my grace. I realized that I am allowed to grieve the magic I spun around the wrong person, but it is not finite, and I will weave it again. That is healing. I have thought back to the terrible moments that have made me wish for a different life. And the truth is, they were all fleeting, heavy building blocks setting the scene for something lighter. It never gets easier, but it always gets better. That is healing. I learned to forgive myself for letting my resolve melt for the wrong person. I learned to do that because I realized I can’t control where I leave pieces of my heart, that it was not one of those things I could’ve done better. I realized that you can’t fail in love, because as long as you keep falling, you’re doing it absolutely right. That is healing. Me and him were not meant to be, but we were meant to meet. In all the love we had and all the love we lost, he was to me who he was fated to be. He doesn’t dance behind my eyes, or on the tip of my tongue anymore. He has slipped away into a dark corner of my heart. He exists there cold and ordinary, all out of magic. Once upon a time, the shape of his name on my lips summoned him like the wind. Now, my sentences are hollow. If you knock, you can hear the echo. Once upon a time, I used to wonder, “when sorrow strikes, will he still remember me? When will the regret of leaving me sink into his bones? Surely i left a mark somewhere on his hardened skin.” Now, I realize that we were cosmically fated to meet and cosmically fated to part. I didn’t give up on him. I just woke up. I woke up and realized he is who he repeatedly showed he was. I realized that me knowing he “has potential” doesn’t change what his actions display. Perhaps, we crashed and burned lifetimes ago. And I am content with that. That is healing. I am not a casual person, and here’s why: I used to think I was inviting love in all wrong. That maybe I was missing the femininity because I had stood so long in that stoic masculine energy. The untouched, untainted, immovable woman. And I remain all of those things, but my views have changed, because in love, I want to melt. I want to be cared for, be indulged, enjoyed. I want to be liquid in my lovers arms. I want friendship in love, but I don’t want a friend. I want to be protected. I want love to come first. I want a safe place to fall when I’m tired of being the immovable woman. So, going back to my earlier statement, “I am not a casual person,” I fall inlove in an instant and I tumble without warning. I’m helplessly all or nothing, never in the middle. It’s almost as if I’m built of magnets, I repel or I attract with a vengeance. And when it hurts, it hurts deep. But when it’s sweet, it’s like honey. I don’t exist on middle ground. There is nothing there for me. It’s either heaven or hell. I used to think that was all a bad thing. That all of that made me hard to love. However, that couldn’t be more incorrect. The right person will move like water along my ships hull. The right person will hold out their arms when I’m turning molten, unafraid to get burned. The right person will never aim for the soft spots that peek out from under my armor. The right person will never weaponize my faults or deconstruct my strengths. When you find the right person everything gets harder and that’s what makes you stronger together because not everything is rainbows and sunshine. It shows you what y’all have gone through to make it as far as you have, and if you can push through the bad times and there’s still an immense amount of love there, there’s a reason you found them. A year and a half ago, I begged to know if I was going to make it and if I did, how the pieces were going to fit. Looking back now, it makes me smile because I can finally say that I made it. It has not been easy. It has been a lot of tears and hard work, but I can finally say that I am ready to be loved again. Break down my walls, I won’t send in the calvary. I’ll let the panic slowly turn to warmth. I’ll light the candles and set the table, this time for two. For so long, this house has seen the endless stretch of solitude. Meals for one and sometimes for none, silent evenings and stoic nights. It has been unbelievably lonely, but loneliness was a better friend than most. For so long, I was closed for renovation. But I’m ready now, I’m ready to let it all back in. That is healing.