Stop Saying Time Heals Everything. It Doesn’t.
You’ve probably heard of this phrase at least once in your life. You’d just broken up with your partner whom you thought was “the one”. You’d painted a “happily ever after” scenario of the both of you growing old together and enjoying life so when the breakup happened, the wound hurt like you’ve been stabbed by a dagger a million times. After processing what’d happened, you leaned to your friends for strength and support. And in the midst of comforting you, they said:
“It’s okay, time will heal everything.”
Here’s the harsh truth: No, it doesn’t.
It’s been a little over a year since I went through a horrible heartbreak and the pain still feels as fresh as it’d just happened yesterday. I’d tried multiple ways to get over it and move on — find a hobby, engage with outdoor activities, spend time with friends, go for therapy, focus on work, read books, paint, travel… You name it. I had many depressive episodes that inhibited me from functioning normally. That include not being able to get out of bed, throwing up everything I ate, and losing interest in almost everything. My boss would criticize my work performance and I’d be like, “Okay, whatever. Fire me then.”, or my friends could be sharing important information with me and I couldn’t care less.
I was very absorbed in the statement that time will heal everything, especially because people around me kept reminding me about it. Whenever I was hit with a depressive episode, I’d tell myself, “It’s okay, it’s only been N months. I’ll feel better later.”.
That ‘later’ didn’t come.
Despite my efforts to spend more time engaging in healthy activities, I was also allowing myself to replay the incident over and over again. Often times, I would let my thinking run wild and create imaginary stories in my head that were simply toxic to me.
It’s what you do during that “time” that helps you heal.
As I sat by my window sill staring into the pitch-black night sky on New Year’s Eve, I took a long time to reflect on my healing progress in 2020. I couldn’t deny that I had made little to no progress at all.
I felt like I was still in square one, that all my sadness, pain, traumas, hatred, anger, love and other emotions were still as intense as the day the heartbreak happened. I broke down and kept asking myself why didn’t time do anything to ease the pain. I turned to the universe and God and asked why everything still felt so fresh to me?
Over the next few days, I spent long hours writing down my emotions and expectations. That’s when I noticed that despite all the healthy activities I was drowning myself in, I wasn’t engaged in them wholeheartedly with a strong willingness to heal myself. Basically, I did all those “healthy activities” because the internet and my friends told me I needed or should do those things, not because I’d sincerely wanted to live healthier and move on. I did them for the sake of ticking it off my to-do list and feeling proud about it when I looked back at the words being struck off.
You need to learn to accept in order to move on.
Acceptance was the hardest shit I couldn’t do for a very long time. And I’m not gonna lie and say I’ve accepted the heartbreak now. Nope, I haven’t. Not yesterday, not today, and I bet it won’t happen tomorrow. However, I’m in the process of learning to accept. It is with this willingness to want to learn to accept that I finally feel like I’ve taken a step forward in my long healing journey, albeit it being a really small baby step.
The thing with acceptance is, at least for me, a battle between me, myself and I. I was in a constant war between my inner self who couldn’t make a decision and stick with it. One day, I’d be full of rage with that guy and tell myself I’ll find a better one. The next day, I’d be crying over the thought that I’d never be able to move on. The constant back and forth between various emotions was super toxic and unhealthy for me but I made no efforts in putting my foot down and making a choice all because of my belief that “time will heal everything”. Looking back, I was such a fool for thinking that I’d slowly forget about the whole incident and automatically be in a better place as time passes.
By learning to accept it, the willingness to move on will start to grow.
Acceptance is a long process, perhaps even longer than the healing process. That’s why being hurt sucks, because you don’t foresee what’s about to hit you. It just happened and you don’t have enough time to build a strong defence or gather enough armor to support yourself. It’s like trying to build a house after an earthquake that split the grounds apart. Your foundation is broken and weak, so naturally, building the house won’t be a straightforward job anymore. You’ve got to fix the foundation before your house can stand tall. But when the earthquake happens and everything is ruined, it’s only human to feel extremely shocked and clueless on what to do next. You’d be mourning the loss of what you once had, and that grief and pain can last for a very long time.
I wish there’s a handbook with all the surefire ways to learn to accept and move on. Life would be so much easier that way. However, everybody functions differently. There’s a lot of trials and errors that need to be done to find a method that works best for you.
For now, we’ll just have be kind to ourselves. And that, is another skill you need to learn.
