When The Healing Is More Painful Than The Wound

Those first few nights were rough.

Trying to distract myself from the pain only made it crash harder into me. Every time I tried to forget, cruel reminders made their entrance seconds later.

I thought I would never get over those first few nights.

I thought that I could not possibly make it any further and I should just stop here. Stop everything.

Then there was a glimmer of hope. Wishful thinking that once I made it past this initial sting, everything would get easier.

This wasn’t trauma. No, I just had a bad day that bled into the ones that followed.

Everything was fine. I was fine. This is fine.

I was wrong.

It’s funny how time doesn’t heal all like they say. In fact, time has a rotten habit of digging up the past for you.

I tried to bury it all. The more I felt it, the deeper I would dig its grave.

The problem is that my mind won’t let go of the shovel. It tricks me into digging it all back up over and over and over.

It won’t allow me to put the pain to rest.

I guess I thought that healing was simple.

I didn’t know that healing is actually just a tug of war between the future and the past.

Healing tells me that I’m getting better.

But the past tells me that I’m not.

Why does this hurt so much worse? I thought healing was full of comfort. I thought that healing meant every day was seven steps forward.

I really was wrong.

Healing is fire.

It is personal arson of the mind and heart.

Healing is relief and burden at the same time.

Healing is taking one step forward and three steps back.

But it is also getting up again and moving on once more.

Healing is the biggest contradiction.

It is the harshest form of confusion.

I spent so much time trying to jump to the end, but the only way to get through this is to take my time.

I just wish it didn’t feel like such an eternity.

And maybe one day it won’t.