onward & upward
When my heart hurts, it’s immediate and obvious—not just to me but to everyone else around me. I have a hard time concealing that kind of pain, the sharp and unforgiving brutality of it. But it’s almost a blessing, I guess, because if the origins are clear, then the healing is more about having patience instead of trying to figure out how and why.
It’s different when your soul hurts. It creeps up on you, little by little, because it doesn’t want to be invasive. It’s a curious thing, like a parasite, feeding on your positive feelings and experiences. It doesn’t render you incapable of joy and wonder because that’s how it stays alive, but if you pay close attention, maybe you might notice how those feelings stop reaching their full potential.
Around November, I noticed. It was just the way I felt, the ghostly approach I seemed to have with everything, how it seemed more apt to say that I was haunting my life and the people around me than living it alongside and with them. I existed. I laughed, I loved, I cried, but none of it really mattered enough. Which, in hindsight, was probably the giveaway.
Everything matters to me. Everything means something to me. And it stopped long before I took notice of it.
So instead of ignoring and distracting it with more in any capacity, I brought my life to a near stop. It’s challenging to try and figure yourself out when you’re too busy piling on instead of unraveling: there’s more to sort through, more to discard, and more to take apart. The discoveries haven’t been pretty, and it’s a process I’m finding to be time-consuming and mentally draining.
But I also needed this for a long time, and I put it off for too long. Years, probably. It’s not anyone’s first instinct to look for pain and to continue to apply pressure where it hurts, but getting on the other side of that is the only way to reset, to start differently.
I’m not close to done. Barely started, even. I’m not going to wake up tomorrow with sparkling epiphanies and revelations, but I think it’s okay for me to recognize my own progress—to be content with my efforts so far, however small or large, as long as I keep going.