I Think You Need to Heal

I think you need to heal.

Or else you’ll wake up tomorrow and realize that everything around you has changed, while you were busy entertaining a wound that stole everything from you.

And I’m not just talking about heartbreak.

I’m talking about the memories that still know how to make you cry. The words spoken years ago that somehow still live rent-free in your mind.

The childhood you never got to enjoy. The people who hurt you. The apologies that never came. The things you witnessed that you wish your eyes could unsee.

You see,

Trauma has a strange relationship with time.

It can turn a ten-year-old memory into something that happened yesterday.

It can make a grown adult feel like a frightened little child at the sound of a familiar voice.

And sometimes, the people who hurt us move on with their lives, while we remain imprisoned in moments they’ve already forgotten.

And isn’t that cruel?

To keep serving a sentence for a crime you never committed.

To carry the weight of something you never deserved.

But listen,

Healing doesn’t mean forgetting. It doesn’t mean forgiving before you’re ready, or pretending the wound never existed.

It means learning that your past can be part of your story without becoming the author of every chapter that follows.

And I know, healing isn’t easy.

Some wounds need more than time and beautiful words.

Some scars take years before we can touch them without remembering the pain.

So take your time.

But please, don’t forget to live.

Don’t let the little child who was hurt become the only version of you you ever get to know.

There are still places to discover, people to meet, flowers to smell, and mornings that deserve to be remembered for something other than yesterday’s pain.

Because one day, I hope you look back and realize that what happened to you was never all there was to you.

You were a whole person before the world hurt you.

And you are still a whole person, even in the places that haven’t healed yet.