Healing Is Not Linear
I wish this was linear; my healing. Sometimes I wish that I could snap my fingers and be okay. I want a medicine that will fix me in a blink of an eye. I want to wake up one day and not be afraid of the mess I’ve created inside me. That’s the thing that I’ve learned though. Healing; is in fact not linear; it is a forever ongoing process. Healing is complicated. It takes so much time, so much change, so much chance.
I will wake up, not thinking about my damage. Happy, ready to conquer my day. Full of energy, hopefulness, and feeling as if I’m brand new. The next day though, that’s all I can think about; my hurt. Despite the beautiful day I had not even twenty-four hours ago, everything will hurt for no reason. Like all the progress I made was just tossed out. How unfair it is to feel like I’m on top of the world one day, but the next not to feel like I didn’t try my hardest to stay there. That’s the thing though, I did try my hardest, I did everything in my power. I took my medicine, went to therapy, ate three meals, and took the time to relax, but even then, I slipped. That’s when I learned, healing isn’t predictable. With good days, do come bad days. Just because I have one bad day out of seven days this week, doesn’t mean I’m back to the start of my process. It just means I am still a human with bad days. Bad days that I can overcome now, thanks to my self-care and new coping mechanisms.
My therapist always told me that she was there to help me but she couldn’t fix me. She’s said multiple times over the last year that I am the only one who can fix me. That my friends, family, and love can support me, but they can’t be the one to make it all better. I’ve learned to be dependent on others is such a powerful thing, but it is more powerful to trust in myself to heal myself. I am the only one who knows what I want and what I need. Yes, I might need more resources but at the end of the day, this is my life. No one else’s.
The people I thought would be here for me, weren’t. When I got out of inpatient at the psychiatric hospital after a few weeks. Some of my friends didn’t dare say anything to me. Some pretended like it never happened, even though they knew it happened. Everyone continued to want me to live that party life I was living. They wanted the normal again, the girl with the joyful smile who had fun, and in a way I understood. I hate being the buzzkill at my friend’s get together. The one who can’t play the party games involving alcohol and get high with. A lot of people couldn’t take the crap I was. So, some of them left and I left some of them. The last call to someone who meant the world to me was the day I self-medicated too much and almost died. He just got mad at me for doing this, again. He didn’t answer the phone calls throughout the entire time I was recovering at the hospital. I unfriended so many people after I got back the most recent time, quietly. I need people who are on my side while I’m hurting. The ones that I loved, weren’t, and I think I deserve a two-minute phone call.
To an extent though, sometimes I understood what they meant. The way I have coped with my depression hasn’t been healthy. I understood the difficulty of being who says they’re going to change but they never do. Someone who breaks promises and shatters just about everything. I know how hard it is to love me sometimes. But I am healing from so many things trying to become a better me for my future. I am trying to be the best me there is, because yes, I want to be normal again too. It just might take a while, and if some people can’t understand, no matter how much it hurts me, they were never worth it and I can find better people.
Hopefully, one day I can wake up and have better self-control without thinking about it. Maybe this new medicine will help me feel slightly better. I pray that one day I will wake up and 100% of the time know how to handle my setbacks by myself. As much as I love therapy, I hope one day I won’t always have to see my therapist to problem solve. I wish I could eat some chicken noodle soup and get better soon, but this is all about me, I am my own medicine. Not the drugs, the sex, the alcohol, or the self-harming, but me and my decisions.
