You remember when you were five, fell of the bike, might have lost a tooth, probably cried a little if your mom was looking, then forgot about it in a minute? You probably had a bleeding knee and a scar that stayed with you for the rest of your life but you just didn't care? Your wounds healed so quickly that you didn't even remember hurting, just having a good time.
Growing up I often ran outside with no shoes on, stepped in shattered glass lying on the street from the bar in the corner, got bleeding feet, then ran back home to my mom to take out the splinter while I was already planning my next adventure around the block. I did not care at all. I was free. Ready to explore more.
Then I got older and realized that all my wounds took longer to heal, they needed to be taken care of in order to not leave a mark. The bleeding started to last longer. So did the pain. Healing became harder. My body told me it was time to be more careful. Not only with physical wounds, but also with the ones I couldn't see. Those took way longer to recover.
I remember my first heartbreak. I was 15 and thought I had it all figured out. I decided I liked the boy and was ready to confess my feelings to him. Needless to say, he did not give a tiny rat's ass. I cried to my best friend for about ten minutes, then we went for a long walk under the starry sky and smoked some cigarettes. Please don't judge me, I grew up in Eastern-Europe. We decided cigarettes were the solution to a broken heart and boys were stupid. I got over it in no time. I was ready to get hurt again. And I did.
Then time went by and I developed a habit of self-destruction when in pain. I thought making myself feel worse would actually get me through my original problem. It did not. Around 22 I truly believed that healing from anything only took a maximum of two months, no matter what happened. I also made myself believe that it actually worked and kept comforting my friends in the same situation with that very thought. Let me apologize for that, it does not work that way. After every single heartbreak I acted like I didn't care, I partied like there was no tomorrow and honestly talked like a fuckin' truck driver - sorry mom. I pretended I was alright to make everyone think I was strong and to make myself believe I was indeed fine. I was not.
The ugly truth is that you'll heal when you're ready, not when you think you should. Or when they say you should. Sometimes scars take a ridiculously long time to disappear. God knows I had a spider bite that did not want to leave me for months - that's longer than most of my relationships lately, maybe I should try and date that spider instead. Above thirty you can't afford being reckless, handling every break-up like you're the victim just because you're hurt. You need to take it as an adult. And how does an adult take it? I'm still figuring that part out.
The hardest part is probably letting yourself feel what you actually feel. There will always be people around you telling you that you should be fine by now. You should get over it in a certain time. What if you're not? Do you really want to disappoint yourself by giving a timeframe to yourself for healing from a trauma? How does that do you any good? You need to go through all the stages of healing just like after a surgery or an accident - you can't tell a person to go for a run after having their spine broken in a car crash. The only cliché here that actually works is that time heals, even though after a certain age it might heal slower.
Why is that? It's probably because you think when you're older you should know better. If you have your fifteenth heartbreak, you think you could have avoided that by relying on the wisdom you gained in the last ten years of dating. Let me just insert here that there are always undiscovered ways to break a heart, don't even think you know it all. There is just no way of learning all of it in a lifetime. So you think you should have been able to avoid what happened to you just by being older and wiser and you're mad at yourself for letting it happen again. Then you automatically think that the healing should go faster. Then you're disappointed again when it doesn't. Please do yourself a favor and let that go right now. Take whatever time you need to walk through the stages of it.
Store your new knowledge, try to remember it next time, but if you don't, it still doesn't mean that you're doing it all wrong. Every single time when you fall off that bike, you will get your knee bruised and it's going to hurt, that's just how it goes, it's unavoidable. The only difference is that the bleeding might take longer and the scar might be deeper. But you would still cry if your mom's looking.
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