I Thought I Was Further Along Than This

The tears came out of nowhere. Well, not really; I guess that is what watching a very sad TikTok video will do to you. BUT I did not expect the tears to flow at the intensity that they did. They wouldn’t stop. 

A single teardrop unleashed an hour of unstoppable, ugly crying as I lay in bed by myself. A destructive force that has me on zero energy today, trying to operate at what seems to be a new normal.

I thought that I was further along than this.

I thought that the hardest parts were behind me. That I had this whole healing thing figured out and that when problems arose, my body and my soul would be able to handle them on solid ground.

The solid ground has dissipated, and I am free-falling.

WHAT DOES FURTHER ALONG EVEN MEAN?

I think that we all have this picture in our heads of what healing is supposed to look like. I mean, we have all seen the transitions in movies or on social media that portray healing as a final destination. That one day, you won’t need that toolkit or those resources that you built up for so many years. BUT is that the reality of true healing?

I thought that being healed meant recognizing my triggers before they knocked me over.

I thought that being healed meant sleeping normally.

I thought that being healed meant getting out of bed.

I thought that being healed meant not crying for an hour because I couldn’t make sense of what was happening inside my body.

I thought that being healed meant using all of the tools that I have learned and simply moving through the difficult things.

BUT what I am realizing instead is that what is happening is the opposite of all of this. 

I am crying and still getting up.

I am exhausted and still doing the things that need to be done.

I am confused and still trying to understand myself.

I am not operating at 100%, but I am still operating.

I am hurting and still trying to communicate instead of disappearing. 

Right now, the communication is only happening through writing because I still can’t verbally express what is going on.

Maybe I am further along than I thought. Maybe I just misunderstood what further along was supposed to look like. 

I sent some of these thoughts to a friend, trying to explain the mess that was happening in my life. Their response?

“Oh! A quantum crumble in real time.”

And for some reason, that made me stop. 

A quantum crumble.

Not a breakdown. Not a failure. Not proof that all the healing I have done somehow disappeared overnight.

A crumble.

Maybe there are moments when the version of ourselves we thought we had finally figured out has to fall apart a little. When two seemingly contradictory versions of ourselves can exist at the same time.

I can be okay and not okay. I can be strong and completely exhausted. I can have healed and still have wounds that hurt. I can be moving forward while parts of me are falling apart.

Maybe that’s the quantum part of it. Because healing didn’t make me immune to being hurt again. Instead, it is allowing me to hurt differently.

I can be messy and complicated. Healed and healing. Falling apart in one part of my life while still moving forward in another. All of those things can be true at the same time.

Today, moving forward means writing this blog post. I haven’t showered. I need to clean my house. I need to work on my business, but today, I am choosing to write. 

Maybe that’s another contradiction I need to learn to live with. My life can feel completely still while I am quietly moving forward inside of it.

There is still a voice inside of me saying that this is insignificant compared to what I am normally capable of, but I am still moving.

Maybe healing is learning that even when the ground disappears beneath me, I don’t disappear with it. 

Some days I will move forward in leaps. Other days, I will crawl. And sometimes moving forward will look a lot like lying in bed with swollen eyes, doing one small thing before I close them again.

I thought that I was further along than this.

Maybe I am.

Maybe this is what further along looks like.