Healing

I was so busy making sure that I had a handle on my pain that I didn’t have any extra energy to even consider dating. Pain has a way of narrowing one’s focus, and I was focused on how to handle and decrease my pain — not dating, not even looking.

Moving can be a traumatic experience. We often forget how many remnants of the past we hold onto—whether intentionally or accidentally, just because we put a letter away in a drawer and forgot about it.

Loving means giving up control. Releasing something to the universe. It’s not prescriptive. There is no place for black and white in love. It’s the ultimate grey.

When someone denies my personality disorder, it makes the process of identifying and challenging the thoughts and behaviors that disorder causes even more difficult. There are broken parts of me that I can’t see. I’m working very hard to uncover them and heal them in a way that improves the quality of my inner and outer life. I don’t need anyone else muddying the waters of my trauma; I do that enough all on my own.

I’m not sure I would have persisted with such ambition prior to my father’s death. I’ve found that a loved one’s passing does more than nudge you forward; it can catapult you towards exciting opportunities.

I don’t want to spend another summer waiting for winter. It took years to realize this, and even more years to act on it. This is the work of healing that no one mentions: you have to find the wounds you didn’t know you had.

When we have an open heart, we experience true joy, love, and intimate connection. So being afraid of vulnerability is really being afraid of intimacy. But we need both to thrive.

It did not solve all of my problems. It did not make the reality of this deep hurt go away. But it did make me feel more like myself, which I'd begun to fear I would never feel again.