Healing

I don’t even know what “healing” means anymore.

Everyone talks about it as if it were light, but to me it feels more like an open wound.

Like tearing the skin off, layer by layer, until only the pulse and the truth remain.

It isn’t peace.

It’s violence. It’s chaos.

It’s the sound of old versions of me screaming as they die.

The parts that kept me safe, the ones that made me small enough to be loved, fight to survive and I am the one killing them.

I thought trauma was pain.

But this…this is another kind of pain.

It’s the pain of honesty.

The pain of looking in the mirror and realizing I was the one who disappeared.

Over and over again.

Every time I said, “I’m fine.”

Every time I swallowed the truth so I wouldn’t inconvenience anyone.

I say I’m afraid of being left, but the truth?

I’ve been leaving myself for years.

I run whenever things get too real, too quiet, too close.

Healing is lonelier than trauma.

At least the pain kept me company.

At least it gave me something to hold on to.

Healing takes everything from me, the story, the role, the armor... and leaves me naked in front of my own silence.

My triggers… are mirrors.

And I keep breaking them because I hate what they show me.

That chaos still feels like home.

That peace feels like nothing, and I don’t know how to live in nothing.

I say I want love.

But when it gets close, I run.

Because love is also a mirror.

And it shows me the wound I swore had closed.

The one that’s still bleeding beneath all the “I’m fine.”

Maybe healing isn’t about becoming whole again.

Maybe it’s about standing among the wreckage and whispering, I’m still here!

Even when I no longer recognize myself.

Even when all I want is to run.

Even when every cell in my body screams to go back to the pain, because at least it was familiar.

Today I’m not trying to be strong.

Or wise.

Just to be.

Raw.

Shaking.

Breathing.

Still here.