I Healed in Messier Ways Than I Expected

Dear Delyara, Healing did not make me softer in the way people promised. At first it made me angrier. Then it made me more withdrawn. Then it made me less available to people who had benefited from my silence. Then it made me grieve things I thought I had already “moved on” from. It was not graceful. There were days I thought I was getting worse, because everything I had pushed down was now asking to be felt properly. I had spent so long surviving by minimizing my own pain that actually facing it felt almost irresponsible. But healing was not making me worse. It was making me honest. Now I understand that healing is not becoming untouched. It is becoming more truthful about what touched you. It is not returning to who you were before pain. It is learning how to live without worshipping pain, hiding pain, or letting pain narrate everything. I still have scars. I still get triggered. I still get tired in certain emotional places faster than other people do. But I no longer confuse those things with failure. That, to me, is healing.