Is It Time That Heals Us, Or Is It Ourselves, Making A Decision To Heal?

We say that time heals us of our pain, but I disagree. It needs us to take responsibility for making a decision to heal. Only then can we really stop hurting.

Time heals all wounds.

I wince at this oft-quoted phrase that society touts over and over again. We buy into all these little ‘someday’ ideas in our life and fall into the scam of wishing for external happiness to change our circumstances. It never works. The pain of waiting for good times is only a verbal placebo for the scarred and mangled ones who believe that emotional processing will occur simply with the passing of time.

I am familiar with the predicament of searching outside for the right regimen to heal my wounds. I was once voiceless and stuck in the shadows of my own life and continued to pour salt on my already painful wounds. I was fractured between my head and heart, consumed with grief and a muddled mind. My wounds were deep rooted and the roots had nerve endings just like the tooth that incapacitated me to varying degrees.

So, was it actually the passing of time, the clock ticking, that healed me, or was it all those activities that I chose to carry out during that time that made the difference?

The truth is that it was not time that healed me – It was me. Time did nothing for me. Time did not heal. But my healing did take time. There came a point at which I decided enough is enough. No more regurgitating and poking at old wounds, keeping it fresh and raw. No more looking for something outside to ‘fix’ me. It was time to get up off the couch and make it happen.

And it is when I myself took responsibility to ‘fix’ my inner experiences instead of waiting for time to somehow take the experiences away from me, that my healing process started. Fixing requires a journey of independence. It took courage to turn inward and get investigative about my feelings and acknowledge the emotional pain.

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So today, do I cry as often? No.

Has it got easier with time? Absolutely Not! Hurt matures; something etched in flesh; a tangible scar.

Does the emotional event freshly resonate in my mind? Not as much. Time makes us forget. If not forget at least it blurs some incident.

Has the hole in my heart healed after 17 years? No. The jagged edges may not as sharp, but the hole is still there.

Was it time that healed this wound? No. I did.

Published here earlier.

Image source: publicdomainpictures

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