“Healing wanders through the murky night rains, tiring yet traversing far, searching for a companion to take this journey’s test, to run wild, hand in hand when defeat stares waiting for the fall.”
To the dearest you,
Back when I first encountered what it felt like to have an irrevocable rupture in one’s reality, it was unknown to me that there existed something called healing. The word to me meant little, nor did I ever use it in my day-to-day life. What we now popularly call the “healing journey” was then just the beginning of pain in my life, to the extent that it brought me here, to the extent that now I know more about pain itself. When something huge crashes into you midway, there is hardly a remembrance of what path you were walking, there only remains the memory of pain and the desperate urge to get rid of it, as soon as humanly possible.
In the midst of getting myself to float on the surface of the pain, I began the never-ending line of questioning within myself. The questions were many, various that you might have asked yourself in hopes of receiving an answer that gives you clarity enough to move on with your life without clinging to what you have gone through. Unfortunately, answers do not come so easily when one hasn’t been a diligent student asking clarifying questions at every turn of life. So the “what”, the “how”, and the “why” of the traumatic life turn remained a mystery to me. But I was persistent, and with a gaping wound waiting for the tending, I began rushing towards the shortest route to recovery.
In my attempts to run, I adopted the process of deeply analyzing every single thing that goes awry, and doing something about it within myself in order to resolve it, as with time and with more knowledge of the ways in which things happened, I realized that the only factor controllable was me, so I must control, and I must never let anything wrong happen again. I was at the time unaware of what greys in life looked like, either something was clearly a good path or clearly a wrong one, nothing like the “in-between” existed for me. So, I chose. I chose perfection, for if I were to be perfect, there would be nothing left to mend, no mistakes waiting at the doorstep to cling to me, no shame at choosing what would likely be wrong, and no turnarounds that shake the ground I walk on. Only peace would wait for me.
The innocent thought behind this was led by the belief that if I were to be perfect, the world would be perfect. If there were no mistakes made, there were no punishments to be had, if I was a good being, had the kindness that the world heavily preached, if I had control over every situation, then only good would come into my life. Alas, I was more than a little surprised and a whole lot disappointed when I witnessed this truth turn into a lie. The mistakes did not stop, and neither did the bombarding shame. The world did not tilt in my favor just because I was obedient to a man-made rulebook that proclaimed to know everything about it.
Repeated actions, lists of life-changing rituals, rebuilding a mindset that was supportive of me, listening to the lives of others with similar struggles to find a sense of camaraderie but mostly answers, surfing the web for what-to-do, the plethora of processes, the undoing of emotions, and things that I did and have forgotten with time were still gruesome to practice each day, but I did it in hopes of healing, not realising that it was my desire to custom-build myself in the image of perfection in disguise. And the questions? They kept coming. There were flaws still neatly shelved on top of flaws, ready to be inspected and sealed with perfection. It never stopped. At the end, perfection lay abandoned when it couldn’t be reached. The conclusion was that perfection was a broken concept.
Soon after having that realization, the voice of a rebel that I have carried fervently with me since a young age shouted, after having gone through the stripping and cruel aims of my mind, ”The world is unfair to you, but so are you.” I carried shame with me for every wrongdoing in my life, I never put it down, never held it in my arms, only ever tried to shush it, to keep it calm. I tried to run away from it, but it always gave a chase, because for how long can one run from something that is found within oneself? A new bunch of questions were born.
This time they aimed not at interrogating all that was deemed wrong within me, but at why it was deemed wrong to begin with. Why there existed some mistakes that did not get awarded with guilt to others? Why were there rules written on stone for me? Why must I be so good, mould myself to have no flaw when the world was imperfect at its best, and even with the expectation burdened upon it to be of nature fair, right, and perfect, it remained imperfect, for that imperfection was valuable by design, but only a malfunction when it was found in the system of mine.
The healing, by taking re-routes and unexpected turns, found itself free of the cage of perfection. No longer was I forcing my being to fit in a nicely sized, custom-built armor to protect myself against the clashes with the world, but the jailer in me was only a little mature, and still a lot angry, with control its desire clutched in its fist. I created a new jail, one a little wider, a little more open with more fresh air. I didn’t try to be perfect for the world, this time the audience was myself. I tried to make everything make sense to myself. Anything that could have a reasonable explanation that did not immediately open the doors to ravaging shame was a welcomed guest.
Judgements were still being made in the courts held in my mind, but I was trying to be the advocate of my wrongdoings, giving proof of why it was right and why my values still remained intact without crossing that fine line. I still knew little of myself, for I had spent some long years of my life only knowing how to be and not being who I always was meant to be, so there were many times when the reasons behind my actions eluded even me. The lack of why was frustrating, and the more the mistakes seemed inexplicable, the harder it got to keep myself safe from the emotions I kept at bay. I was fighting with myself to keep myself safe, but my safety was still conditioned upon crumbling foundations. I couldn’t behave in the most rightful manner, and so was highlighted the inefficiency of the cage in making me free, in leading me to healing.
Next time around, the rebel became the advocate, and this time there were no reasons to give, no discussions to be had, and a single question resonated in the hallways filled with crime…“So what? So what if some wrong has been committed, and so what if a mistake has come to pass, and so what if I’m not a saint dressed in a white cape?” There was stunned silence waiting after the bold exclamation, a burden slowly eased from the shoulders of the one within myself that was held in questioning. For the very first time, it felt like a sip of pure acceptance.
There was chaos too, arguments on why it must make sense, on how will then the story be retold to the world to gain its favor, how will we be declared free when the jury is held not in the mind but in the world with an audience outside of us as witnesses. What will we do when sharp fingers accuse us of being the big bad wolf? Well then, if a wolf must hunt for a kill to feed its stomach, if it must growl at the one whose intention is not proven, if it must claw in a haze to live, then so be it. If to be a human is to be flawed, to be wrong, to learn and become, to shed and return, and to be so complex that a simple mind cannot fathom my existence, then let me be the human. I refuse to be a hunter declared by myself and be judged on notions written by those of an unfamiliar world.
Both these experiences, one of perfection and another of being perfect in my own eyes, showed me that even if I removed the world from the pedestal, I still read its rulebook and followed it like a holy guide. I felt deep resentment when I wasn’t rewarded with joy even after following what was written beneath the section “Right way to live.” Those who wrote these rules seemed lost to me, for even I, when I followed this path, found the healing to be lost. There were only conditions left. If I was good, I received care, and when I was not, I became the one who unraveled the bandages to harm the wound of the past.
I lacked understanding of my own behaviour because the template for understanding was to look at the surface, through the eyes of someone who hasn’t lived the same. It’s only fair to not find any gem lying on the surface, as finding it requires the ground to be dug. One needs to claw it out. When looked upon deeply enough, within me lay answers that I was, many times, not ready to hear, but relief came only when I accepted their existence. Did I want to be someone who went and did something they regret, to repeat a behavior I wish to break free of? No, for any human would wish to avoid being in pain. But yet I did it, and I did it because I wanted to, I wanted to, but which I? That was the puzzle that needed solving. “How could I have done that?” became an irrelevant question when I accepted that if one perceives that their survival depends on removing the poison in their body, which could only be removed by cutting themselves and letting the poison bleed out, then a cut must be made.
In a world that came into existence with the intelligence of beings that evolved to survive through the years of becoming and unbecoming of this existing space, there is little doubt that within each of us, the one thing that works without one pulling its lever up and down is survival. Little makes sense, but nothing happens without making sense. It made sense for me to be the way that I’m, it made sense for me to make more of a certain type of mistake than another, it made sense why I chose one path over another. It made sense how I hurt myself, and it made sense how I decided to heal it. If something exists, it is because it must, and if it gets a reason not to exist, then I deeply believe that it will leave me by myself, for no part of me desires to bring me harm, to subject me to painful experiences, to make me crawl through mud if it can do it in clean clothes with no skin to burn.
In these very few years that I have lived with this realization, I have found within each experience that I wish to drag away from me, one that gives me pain when I remember it, there always has been a reason, and when I found myself listening intently to it, I found all the judgement dissolved, for the one speaking was myself, and the pain it spoke of was also of myself, and the space disappears of dismissal, of why it shouldn’t have happened, why I must not feel this way, when one witnesses how it couldn’t have been any other way. When I find myself crying with the pain I didn’t recognize as that of myself before, the only judgement I could make was of finding myself being cruel, and the only offering I could give was an apology for understanding my own pain and to give it love, for it did splendid work of helping me with that very pain. Its protection was less understood, and even if present in bizarre ways, I decided to trust it for doing the job well till I was ready to do it myself and free it of its responsibility.
To answer the question I posed… Healing finally comes home—not to wander, not to leave again and again—when there exists a safe home for it to stay in. Without a home, there could be built a conditional dwelling for it to come and go; If there is no safety in what you build, you can build an asylum and call all that you dislike about yourself to be a condition fit for staying in it. You can build a courthouse, where the ups and downs of healing can be judged as either a victim or a culprit, or justified and unjustified, but without safety for healing to exist freely, it will evade and run, visit you and leave when it sees you in pretense, fight to free itself when your arms around it are not dipped in warmth but coated in control.
Making a home is a commitment to the self, to remove the guests that were once welcomed but then begin to threaten the peace carefully built, to redecorate even when you have taken immense liking to the old dysfunctional furniture. It will need breaking rooms to reconstruct spaces for collective gatherings, to put curtains instead of doors to create a partition less threatening. So many aspects to discover and so much time to build a house where the child in you plays merrily, the rebellious you finds a dedicated space that it craves, the wise you who tends to the one that wishes to isolate within a dark room with only its friends filled with misery.
The home can stay under construction as long as you make it with love and with the companionship of healing that has, after a long tiring journey, decided to come home and teach you how to create one. May the bricks of your home be strong to hold the foundation of your safe place, and with that, I wish you a merry time with creation.
From my heart, to yours.