Genesis: Healing is a work in progress

I used to swim in sadness, staying in the pool so long my fingertips pruned. Every once in a while, it’s beautiful to stroke through sorrow, but you have to get out before you drown.

Is it normal to hear them in every song?

I used to hear our story play in every chorus, just out of focus, like replaying memories under rippling water. The ‘what ifs’ would wave in, fantasies of alternate realities where I made the ‘right’ decision and they were still in my life. They would enter my dreams and everything would be just as it was ‘before.’

It truly felt like my life had fractured into the ‘after them,’ and everything from now on would be defined by their absence: my wrong decisions pushed me off the trajectory that I was supposed to be on — life without them was my punishment.

I couldn’t be alone — I couldn’t be alone with the person who ruined everything.

And so I numbed my sorrow in my sleep and in crowded rooms of laughing people where I floated above them in another dimension, where time wasn’t real and my mistakes didn’t exist.

But I couldn’t tread water in my tears any longer. I was so close to going under without the energy to break the surface again. You’re human, I told myself, you have to forgive yourself.

I started to make an effort to not beat myself up — to forgive myself for not being healed when I met them.

I noticed the difference in my mindset first: the choppy, anxious water turned into smaller waves of reminiscence and beautiful thunderstorms. There were moments where I felt like I would be okay, my thoughts quietly riding my sorrow’s sea.

I became anxious because a calmness consumed me — I worried a storm was coming. I hadn’t felt at peace for such a long time.

A storm did come. But in hindsight, it cleansed me.

I felt everything. I distanced myself from the people that continuously hurt me over and over again. I used to beg people to treat me better, sometimes for years or even for the entire relationship, instead of just letting go. I punished myself with their treatment because I thought their actions defined my worth.

But really, my own actions define me. Which in itself, I really struggled with because I defined myself by my worst mistakes — labeling myself as a ‘bad person,’ rather than by my best attributes.

That’s where therapy becomes a lovely tool. My therapist altered my perception of self and everyone else: we’re simply a mixture of pain, love, mistakes — those things that make us human.

Isn’t it beautiful that we don’t have to be perfect?

Through forgiving myself — which is still a work in progress — I’m able to forgive everyone else too. Forgiveness freed me to let go.

When I think about the people I’ve lost or drifted apart from in the past couple of years, I see our memories together as a collection of beautiful moments that we share with each other. The ending no longer defines how I see them — however painful it was.

This is my beginning: allowing myself to feel every emotion and make mistakes without being so hard on myself.

I used to hate how much I sunk into sadness. Now I think I’m lucky to be able to feel every emotion so deeply. All my experiences, devastating and thrilling, have been so rich with feeling. And I’m starting to believe that it's a blessing. It’s an act of care for everything and everyone around me.

I still swim in sad waters sometimes, but I’ve learned to dry myself off and not overstay until I prune. Because outside the waves of nostalgia and non-existent worlds where we are still friends, I am more healed than I was ever before.

I wish I was healed for you back then. But I’m healing for myself right now.

For the first time ever, I live in the present. Where night walks in rain storms, wine nights with the girls, obnoxious laughter in public and the low hum of music at dinner exists.

However beautiful our memories are, I owe it to myself to live in the now for me. I owe it to myself to heal.

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