The Day I Stopped Romanticizing My Pain

For years, I thought my pain made me real.

I thought it made me deep, interesting, worthy of being understood. I carried it like a secret language, something only certain people could recognize. I didn’t just experience heartbreak or loneliness—I turned it into poetry. I wrapped it in beautiful words, soft metaphors, and late-night reflections.

Pain wasn’t just something I survived.

It became something I presented.

Somewhere along the way, I started believing that suffering was proof. Proof that I cared deeply. Proof that I had lived. Proof that I was not shallow.

And writers… we are especially guilty of this.

We are taught, subtly and loudly, that pain is fuel. That our best work comes from our worst moments. That healing is nice, but heartbreak is art.

So I stayed close to my wounds.

Not because I enjoyed them, but because I didn’t know who I was without them.

I romanticized sadness like it was a personality trait. I made loneliness feel poetic instead of empty. I turned sleepless nights into stories. I convinced myself that constantly revisiting the past was “processing.”

But it wasn’t processing.

It was dwelling.

It was living in a loop because the loop felt familiar.

I would replay old conversations like they were sacred scripts. I would hold onto memories that hurt because letting them go felt like losing a part of myself. I would miss people who didn’t deserve to be missed, simply because the ache made me feel connected.

Pain became a home I kept returning to.

Not because it was safe.

Because it was known.

And then one day, something shifted.

It wasn’t dramatic. No thunder. No sudden breakthrough.

It was an ordinary afternoon. The kind of day that doesn’t look important until you realize later that it was.

I was sitting alone, scrolling through old messages, reopening a wound I had already touched a hundred times before. I could feel the familiar sadness creeping in, like an old song I knew every word to.

And suddenly, I felt… tired.

Not tired in the way you feel after a long day.

Tired in the way you feel after carrying something for too long.

I realized I was exhausted from my own emotional rituals.

I was tired of turning pain into proof.

Tired of making suffering my identity.

Tired of believing that healing meant losing depth_attach

That moment scared me.

Because romanticizing pain is easy.

Healing is harder.

Pain asks nothing from you except to stay.

Healing asks you to change.

Healing asks you to move forward.

And moving forward means facing a terrifying question:

Who am I without my sadness?

I didn’t know the answer.

I had spent so long being “the one who endured,” “the one who felt deeply,” “the one who survived.”

Pain made me feel special.

It made me feel like I had a story.

But slowly, I began to see the truth:

I wasn’t honoring my pain.

I was decorating it.

I was performing it.

I was holding onto it like a fragile treasure, afraid that without it, I would be empty.

But pain is not a treasure.

It is not art.

It is not a requirement.

It is not a personality.

Pain is simply pain.

And it deserves compassion, not romanticization.

That day, I didn’t magically heal.

I didn’t wake up the next morning completely free.

But I made one quiet decision:

I stopped treating my suffering like it was sacred.

I stopped reopening wounds just to feel something.

I stopped calling longing love.

I stopped confusing emotional chaos with depth.

I started choosing peace, even when peace felt unfamiliar.

And here’s what no one tells you:

Healing is not poetic.

Healing is boring.

Healing looks like boundaries.

Healing looks like sleeping without checking your phone.

Healing looks like not telling the same story again and again.

Healing looks like silence.

But healing is real.

And real is better than romantic.

My writing changed after that.

My life changed too.

I didn’t lose my voice.

I found it.

Because pain may be loud…

But healing is honest.

And the day I stopped romanticizing my pain was the day I finally gave myself permission to live—not as a wound, not as a tragedy…

But as a person.