Healing is not a straight line

Over the past couple of days, I've seen things on Facebook (🙄) that previously would have thrown me for a loop. My heart would have been pounding, I'd have run to find someone else to offload my pain onto, I'd have chosen to swallow my discomfort rather than turn it around, examine it, feel it.

The truth is that some things do still make my heart race with anger. The truth is that I do grapple with where I've been, who I was, what I've done. The truth is also that I know I'm better for the decisions I've made and that the feelings I have are normal. The truth is I gave big things up to experience even bigger things.

So when I see things that would have kept me up all night 2 years ago and instead feel just a tiny bit of rage and then go about preparing a delicious meal, actually enjoy it and then am able to reflect, rather than find a co-conspirator, I know my line is getting straighter. I know that the healing is continuing. I know that I'm feeling the present and that the past is becoming a place I am learning from and not a place I live.

Straight lines rarely exist when it comes to healing. The spikes of pain or setbacks do get less poky over time, though. There are very clear and distinct areas where I know my pain remains, that will take longer to heal; areas where the poking seems relentless. And I don't know that it will ever go away, but I know that the pain is valid. And letting myself accept that and sit with it is part of the process.

Loving the one in front of me is healing. Whether my heart will ever be open to loving another is yet to be seen. A part of me has been broken, ruined. But the one in front of me reminds me that broken things can be repaired. And the spikes of pain remind me that something once mattered a lot to me. Maybe I'll feel that way about...dogs again. Maybe the broken bits can be glued together. For now, I'm definitely still bleeding a bit.

She helps, though. ❤️