Ohh, Dear Me

The term “healing” has been used a lot in the last few years. Healing from our childhoods, our traumas, our unhealthy relationships. Healing from our own personal toxicity. People have coined their moment of self-discovery and self-worth “a journey of healing” in this current realm in society as mental health is finally a part of a more global conversation, and the notion of healing is at the forefront of it – thankfully.

I, myself, have used this term to describe the last year or so of my life. Hell, I closed my business for almost three months to travel around Europe to “heal.” But what exactly does that even look like? What exactly is “healing?” Is it saying yes to everything and doing things I am scared to do? Is it getting under someone new to get over someone else? Is it forgetting everything bad that’s happened? Is it becoming a different person completely? Is it sitting in my hostel, writing about it, just as I am right now?

At the end of this trip, will I be cured from heartache? From my lifelong grief? From myself? And if I’m not healed, if I find myself feeling the same way I felt coming here as I do when I leave, when will I be healed? When does the healing journey find its destination?

When you think of a wound, one that has cut so deep that the blood is a thick, crimson that flows almost slowly, the process of that wound healing is an unforgiving, brutal, never-ending one. And they say time heals all wounds, and in most respects, that’s true. But once the wound is sealed and healed, and the pain no longer is felt, then what? It’s not as if it didn’t happen. That pain was very much real and very much took place. What we are left with, though the wound has closed, is its scar.

These scars, with which we have to continue to live with forevermore, is perhaps the most vital part of healing. But the thing about scars is that they can be painful just by simply existing – no matter how much time and healing has been granted. They are the reminder that a wound, physical or mental or emotional, was once there, that pain was once felt. So, therefore, isn’t that pain always still there?

Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe for some, and not for others, and maybe it depends on the wound. Some run deeper than others. I know mine do.

I don’t think “healing” is necessarily what we have to strive for, though. Instead, I think it’s living with the scars we should strive for. If we accept our wounds for what they were and continue to be for us, isn’t that healing in and of itself?

I sure as shit hope so. I don’t think I’m going to come back from this trip a changed woman necessarily – though I am significantly tanner, more in debt, and know how to say thank you in Greek (efcharisto)… yolo, right?

But what I think I am learning is that my “healing” journey is not what I thought it would be. It’s not being cured. It’s not being rid of emotions. It’s not being a changed woman or person. It’s not forgetting my wounds as if they didn’t happen.

Healing is just living with scars from the wounds that pained us, not living with the erasure of them. Understanding that they accompany us in whatever direction our lives take us, that we are who we are because of those wounds, that living with our scars instead of pretending they didn’t happen – that’s the key.

I got my heart broken and I think about it every day while I’m on my trip, and yet, I’m still having the time of my life. The world is loving me even if someone else won’t and I’m embracing it – and that’s healing.