This Is When You'll Know

“Don’t be so hard on yourself when you find yourself dwelling on your past and overthinking about all the misfortune you’ve had. Because sometimes people forget that the past is a pathway. And a pathway is a journey. and a journey takes time. and time is all you have when you feel lost. So please be patient, be kind because something better is on the way.”

-r.m. Drake

You can’t force it. You can’t rush it. You can’t decide when or when it doesn’t occur. You can only welcome it with open arms. With willingness. Allowing it to help you find peace. Tired of being blind, taking the easy path. Just prolonging the inevitable pain. Healing isn’t a choice. It’s a process that we have to give up all the questions we still want to hold onto, we have to give up control. A path that will make you feel the harsh realities that you’ve tried to forget, tried to ignore. Often bringing you more pain until you’re ready to truly heal.

“Sometimes to find the way we must first lose the way.”

-Atticus

A kind of healing that won’t haunt you. Probably a kind that you won’t even expect. Because that’s the thing about healing, the way that it finds us. The way that it decides to help us, heal us. That way is never the way that we expect, never the way the we would have chosen. But, it is the way that it is meant to happen. A kind of healing that will help you become whole again, not needing anyone else to pick up the pieces anymore. We often don’t learn how big of a mistake it is to look for our healing in other people, to ask them to pick up the pieces of ourselves that are broken. To trust them, to depend on them when we feel weak unable to pick ourselves up. Not realizing that it is the opposite of self-love. Thinking we aren’t capable of rescuing ourselves, saving ourselves. Underestimating ourselves. And that is where we think wrong.

“the heartache will teach you. then peace will find you.”

-Atticus

Healing is something you have to want for you and do for you. Not as a means of forgetting. Putting a bandaid on something isn’t healing, it’s what’s happening under that band aid. It’s a part that lives within all of us. Lying untapped, undiscovered. Wanting to be heard. Wanting to help. But, know that when we are ready. When we finally give voice to that part of ourselves. That’s when we are ready to heal. That’s when we’ve felt enough pain, hurt. More than we ever really needed to, ever deserved to. But need to. To learn. To be open. To be broken. To be put back together. To change. To transform. To grow.

“If you heart hurts a little after letting go of someone or something, that’s okay. It just means that your feelings were genuine. No one likes ends. And no one likes pain. But sometimes we have to put things that were once good to an end after they turn toxic to our well being. Not every new beginning is meant to last forever. And not every person who walks into your life is meant to stay.”

-Najwa Zebion

You’ve healed when you are able to talk about whatever happened without it controlling your present feelings and emotions. Doesn’t mean you don’t feel anything towards it anymore, but it doesn’t consume you anymore. It doesn’t control you anymore. It doesn’t paralyze you anymore. It means that your whole world doesn’t stop anymore replaying everything that happened before and everything you felt all over again like it just happened.

What you don’t realize is that so much of what you’re afraid to feel, afraid to face, is part of the path to healing. And those things that you’re afraid of feeling, talking about. You don’t have to be afraid of. The fear is holding you back and hurting you more than whatever you think they might make you feel. Facing your fears makes them not really even fears anymore because you’ll understand where they come from and why you feel them. Healing doesn’t happen without facing the pain head first.

“I have learned that when sadness comes to visit me, all I can do is say 'I see you.' I spend some time with it, get up, and say goodbye. I don’t push it away. I own it. And because I own it, I let it go.”

-Carolina Zacaria

When you can talk about it without it ripping you to pieces, unable to finish a sentence because you’re either crying or angry. Neither extremes finding you any peace. When you can think about it without regretting it. Without all the pain that used to surround it. Understanding how much it taught you. About life. About love. About friendship. About yourself. How much you actually needed it to happen whether you wanted it to or not. Not trying to erase, not wanting to change. Thinking about the person you were and the person you are now. Thankful for all the experiences you’ve been through. That’s when you’ve healed. That’s when you’ll know.

“As you get older you begin to realize that you are made up of so many broken things. Things you believed could certainly destroy you but instead pattered against you. The Pieces become part of you, like little shards of broken glass that sometimes hurt, but could never break you.”

-JmStorm

The truth is that that realization of us healing does not usually occur until we have grown tremendously. Until we have stopped fighting our main reactions towards whatever happened. Until we have stopped focusing on the external and looked internal. Until we have stopped trying to be over it, over them, and just trusted that in time we would be okay. Trusted that whatever needed to be happy within us and to us is all a part of a process that we can’t rush. We realize what is happening when we stop looking for it.

“learn to heal properly or you may find old wounds bleeding into your present.”

-Samantha King

When we start making choices out of self-love, self-respect, self-care, self-confidence and not out of self-hate, self-pity, low self-esteem, and self-deprecation. Choosing to be more for you. Choosing you over others. Seeing yourself as more. Doing what you need to do. And shifting your perception of yourself.

“Remember that sometimes not getting what you want is a wonderful stroke of luck.”

-Dalai Lama

Because as long as you’re reacting, living as an effect of everyone else is no way to live, your emotions, your life, is at the mercy of the things they say and do. It’s not how you have to live either. You have the power to change that. As long as you’re asking why, when. Pretending to be okay, pretending to be over it. So desperately wanting to heal. Saying you want to, but your actions contrary. You’ll never find the kind of healing that you need. Because when you’re ready, in time, it will occur within you and in your life on a conscious and subconscious way and one day you’ll realize that you don’t feel the same way anymore. Little by little. It’ll get easier. In time. In life. And no one can tell you how your healing will happen. Because we all heal very differently, in our own time. Some wounds faster, easier than others.

Every event. Every person. Every experience. Every love. Affects us all very differently. Some leave without a sound. Others leave with an echo. We never know until they’re gone.

The impact that someone or something has on you is never something that you should blame yourself for. Never something worth regretting. Never something that you should be so eager to try to erase, forget. All a part of the person you are becoming. Not a person defined by the people who have hurt them or the things that have happened to them, but a person better because of those things. A part of the live that you have lived and there’s no point regretting a second of that.

A mosaic is made of a thousand different pieces. Some more beautiful than others. But all creating something incredibly breathtaking. Something beautiful. Something whole.

“Life had broken her but she was still there persisting in the shards of her broken pieces.”

-Atticus

You have to make peace with what happened by accepting and acknowledging. Not asking questions anymore. Not wondering what if. Understanding that it happened and that nothing can change it. There’s no point trying to live in the past of something that you can’t change. That it wasn’t about you. It wasn’t your fault. Letting go of blame. Knowing it was for a reason. And being okay with that. No longer hanging on. No longer holding on. To be able to remember but not to fall apart. No longer scared to think about it, them because you know that the situation, person no longer has any control over you, over your feelings and emotions.

When healing no longer becomes about forgetting, but about making peace with what happened. Taking back control the power it held over you. That’s when you’ll know. That’s when you’re ready for healing to transform you, to grow from it. Healing is rarely ever just about what happened. It usually has a lot more to say, a lot more to tell you than you’re ready to hear. Then you’re ready to see. And those are the truths that we are often scared of, not ready to see. They have much to teach us in terms of things about ourselves. You have to learn to live without waiting for others. For them to give you the things that you want, need, and hope for. All the things that you want, you can give to yourself.

“Part of accepting the past is in the acceptance that you cannot change it. You ca learn from it, you can heal from it, but you cannot rewrite it, but that’s what people try to do. They get out of a bad relationship and look to rectify with someone new. But this won’t work because you’re waiting your future with words from the past.”

-JmStorm

Healing is:

Understanding that it is a part of your story, your growth, and who you are. Not being so hurt that all you want to do is forget and say fuck you. To be angry, to feel bad for yourself. Being able to see that just because it ended in flames doesn’t mean it was always on fire. That there was good, happiness. And that the memories you made aren’t things that you have to forget. Because we make a thousand memories with people who will enter and exit our lives whether we want them to or not. And the pain can be blinding, but it doesn’t mean we have to lose ourselves in it. It doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen for a reason. Finding peace with healing will help you understand that everything happens for a reason. But, that isn’t always obvious when it happens. A reason that takes time to reveal itself because even if it did initially, you even hear it out. Unable to hear past the pain you feel that’s deafening. Resonating so loud within you that it’s hard to even think.

So much of healing is simply understanding, a deeper understanding. About yourself. About the situation. About the things you feel. And that understanding will bring you so much peace because it’ll give you clarity.

“and no matter how bad it hurts, some people leave to make you stronger, while other times they leave to help you fall in love with yourself.”

-r.m. Drake

The more you try to rush it, the longer it will seem to take. The more you try to resist it, the more it will hurt and, in turn, the more time it will take. This is time that you need. That we all need at many points in our lives. It isn’t a time of weakness. It is actually quite the contrary, a time of strength. Because taking time isn’t an easy thing to do. It takes a very mature person to be able to do what’s best for them rather than what’s easiest, to give to themselves that act of self-love. Being ready to let go of the answers that we never got. The outcomes we never wanted. The things we wanted but never got a chance to get. The pain we never thought we would feel.

Ready to face the truths. The realities. Of our pain. Our hearts. The demons that all seem to come out to play in the midst of our darkest moments.

Healing happens when we aren’t expecting it. When we stop losing focus on it and start paying attention to ourselves, the things within ourselves that we’ve neglected, disregarded. The things within ourselves that need to learn from the pain. And unfortunately, those are usually the things that we choose to ignore and hide or even parts that we don’t know about ourselves until something or someone makes us feel or see it. Just like the things we’ve been told that possibly even knew deep down yet we choose to overlook because we didn’t see them relevant. We were lost in the bliss and in the denial that it wouldn’t happen to us. Choosing not to listen until it became too late.

And now that you finally want to listen, want it to find you. You’re trying to force something that can’t be forced. And as long as you try to, it won’t find you in the way you need it to.

Here you are, probably alone thinking about it all. Wondering when, if ever, you’ll be okay. Wondering why it can’t be easy. So desperately wanting to be over it. Done with it. Not wanting to think about it. About them. Feeling like you’re all alone dealing with this. Thinking you should be over it. Seeing how they’re handling things. Like it is a competition. Doing everything you can to distract yourself from the very real reality that you only feel in the silence, darkness of night. Hurting yourself by the things you’re currently doing trying to help yourself. Putting your heart through more pain when it hasn’t even had a chance to understand why it feels so much pain. Knowing the things that you need to do but not yet being strong enough to do them for yourself. Only starting to learn how to love yourself and how to be the things that everyone else always was for you. Being everything for you. Beginning a brand new chapter that won’t be a short one.

“This is life. People will screw you over. You’ll fight with your family. You’ll witness things that will change you forever. You’ll blame new lovers for things old lovers did. You’ll lose best friends you thought would always be there. You’ll come to realize that everyone has a past. You’ll cry, you’ll laugh, and you’ll embarrass yourself. But then, you’ll find your very own moment where none of that matters; where you can sit back ad realize that crap happens to the people who can handle it and that this is who you are, and that no one should want to change you, including yourself.”

-Word Porn

Give yourself permission to heal. Permission to not be okay. Permission to take time and to do whatever the hell you need to do. Don’t think you have to do anything you don’t want to do. No obligation. No social norms. Don’t force it. Don’t try to rush it. Healing is never an overnight process. It happens physically. Mentally. Spiritually. And emotionally. And all those happen at very different rates. Be patient with yourself.

It’s a long process with many different steps along the way. Grieving (because anyone that ever meant anything to you is a loss). A loss doesn’t just mean that someone is dead. Acceptance. Closure (the kind that you give to yourself). Letting go (And we fight just as hard to let go as we do to hold on. Even if we refuse to admit it). Moving on. And then usually forgiveness. Peace. With yourself. With others. With the things that happen. With life. With your pain. And that’ll be when you are able to talk about whatever happened and you’ll be okay. But, understand that the road to making peace with what happened is not a short one. But it is a well worth it one. It's okay to not have all the answers, to not know what all you're feeling. A road that will show many things to you and teach you more than you’ll ever expect.

“Real change is never overnight. It’s a gradual process that involves the discipline to make consistent choices. Ones that fulfill you spiritually, mentally, emotionally, and physically. Choices that support the most excellent essence of you. Change happens by choice, but the discipline to stay consistent can’t be developed overnight.”

-Rob Hill Sr.

This is what you need to know. Love yourself enough to forgive yourself. To not hate yourself. To stop blaming yourself. To not punish yourself for what happened. Stop trying to forget. Stop wanting to erase what happened. Yeah it sucked. But, we often refuse to grow, refuse to learn until we are forced too. Don’t judge yourself by the way someone else handles pain or heals. Allow this to bloom in you, not take root in you. You are not your past. You are not your pain. Don’t let this pain make you become someone you aren’t. Pain isn’t ever a fun thing, but it doesn’t have to be an ugly one for you.

Don’t invalidate anything you feel. Don’t try to rush this. Surround yourself with people who will be real with you. Who support you and truly want what’s best for you. Remember that healing is a journey. Sometimes that journey takes a few weeks and sometimes it takes a few years. Some days you’ll be okay and some days you’ll feel like you’re at rock bottom. Both are okay. You’re gonna go back and forth. Healing is full of so many ups and down. You have to take the good with the bad. And in the journey to healing often we find ourselves in the process. Most importantly, understand that everything you feel is normal. This is about you and that’s not a selfish thing. Sometimes you have to want it for yourself because no one else will.

“Believe in yourself and all that you are. Know that there is something inside you that is greater than any obstacle.”

-Christian D. Larson

Healing is peace. But, peace ins’t always easy. Darling, please remember that. You’ll know when you stop asking. When you start putting yourself first and loving yourself first. This time is more important than you know. And if you let it will be one of the most eye opening and revolutionary self-actualizing chapters in your story. Sometimes we need a little pain to make us stop. Because pain helps us learn more about ourselves than happiness ever could. You’ll know when you don’t even realize you know.

“Not everyone deals with their emotions the same way. We all have our own coping mechanisms. We all have days when we can cope, and days when we can’t. We drop, we rise. We hold on, we let go. But vat’s important is that we make the right choices. We do what is best for us and what is right for us. It’s your life, your choices, your rights.”

-loversjournalx