I’m not sure “healed” should be a word.
Heal? Yes. Healing? Absolutely. But, healed? Past tense. As in done. Finished. Over. Completed. Shut the door and turn the key.
I’m not so sure.
Some days I think I’m there, the wound healed over with no hint of a scar. But that’s just wishful thinking. A fallacy reveled when the wound opens from the slightest unintentionally targeted remark or interaction, triggering the pain and uncertainty associated with the initial cut. At least now I have practice. Practice feeling the pain and the fear. Recognizing its roots. Knowing what part of it is real and what is simply echoes of the past, ghosts that can cause no real harm. I have practice accepting the pain and practice letting it go. I speak its language.
It is said that practice makes perfect. Will perfect be when I am healed? Or will I achieve perfection in the cycle of feeling, accepting, and releasing? Most likely, perfection will remain elusive and I will have to settle for better:)
Maybe I will be healed when I accept that I will always be healing.
Good thoughts here for sure…and lots of practice over time will hopefully make even the practice easier.
I understand this today. Today I am sitting in paradise, staring at the turquoise Caribbean Sea and wrestling demons I haven’t thought about in many months. A wound ripped open in a conversation last evening that has left me dull, listless and on the verge of tears. I think you are right about perfection in the cycle. I think that is the best we can hope for.
I once knew a woman whose son had been abducted and was still missing 20 years later. She had, as she put it, perfected grief. She mourned him over and over again, with every anniversary or new lead in the case or phone call from the FBI. She said the pain never lessened — not even a little bit — but she became incredibly nimble at moving through it. I suppose that, in itself, is some form of “healed.”
Thank you for sharing.
Waves. Grief always comes in waves and to expect for sadness to diminish completely is to expect that the ocean would uncouple itself from the wave. Ribe it and it becomes a part of your beauty – imperfect vicious beauty.
I love it, “ocean uncouple itself from the wave.” Beautifully said:) Let’s go surfing, then!