Is this what healing looks like? You honestly can’t tell. You’re going through the motions. You’re going out and chatting with people. Taking courses. Getting outside to exercise. Reinvesting in yourself with refreshed interests. And you’re working to be better — a better person, a better friend, and better family member.
And yet you still break down. You still fall to your knees crying. It still hits you impossibly hard when you think about the future and how unknown everything is. You still have moments when you feel weak for wanting what you lost again. And then you berate yourself for wanting what you know you shouldn’t.
And then there’s the emptiness. The nothing you feel when you try to feel something — anything — for someone again. You don’t feel alive. You don’t feel engaged. You don’t feel interested in anything or anyone. You try and try and try, but the more you try the more you convince yourself something in you is indefinitely broken.
So you question, think, worry, and shut down. It hurts the people you love when you do, and then you feel worse. But you can’t see things straight. Or maybe you are seeing things straight for the first time — but you don’t want to.
So you continue on. This feeling of just existing is something you’re getting used to. You know it isn’t what you want, but it’s all you can manage at this time. You dream some days that you’ll feel again. You’ll remember what if feels like to actually come to life when someone walks in the room. There is so much about being with someone that you’ve forgotten — those little moments that feel impossible now.
So you just keep looking forward. It’s all you can do. But when you do look back, even for a moment, you know there’s progress. You’ve done the work. You’ve made the mistakes and made amends for them. You HAVE become better. The pain feels almost natural — but far less intense — at this point. And that means you are moving forward. Even during those periodic waves of emotional exhaustion, the pain does not endure.
You think, maybe that’s just because you’re numb to it all at this point. But that’s ok. Maybe the numbness is what you need to get through this next period. The truth is, yes, you are healing. Even if you can’t feel it. Even if it’s not erasing the scars completely. You. Are. Healing.
So when you’re crying on your knees, please remember any progress is progress nonetheless. There’s no need to berate yourself for feeling, for wanting, for mourning the loss of something you held dearly. You are moving forward. It may look like the world is moving past you but you are making forward progress, however incremental. You are going to make it to the other side, love. I promise you will.
