You Will Heal

Salaam,

I feel that healing is inevitable, even when we don't want it to be.

I can't speak for great loss, because I have not yet suffered the death of the closest of my relatives, but I feel like that healing is inevitable, too.

Certain states can delay that healing, just like certain states of the body can delay tissue healing, like diabetes.

And everyone heals differently and in different ways. And some wounds run deeper than others or are of a different nature, or are more disfiguring.

But healing happens. Tears evaporate, bruises are resorbed and cuts reapproximate, sometimes scar.

I can't speak for great loss but I can speak for love loss.

I can speak for times when I never thought I'd be the same, that I thought I'd never love again, and what would life be worth? Nothing would be like this love.

And in some ways, I was right. I was never the same, and nothing was like that love. And I don't want it to be. I want it to be mutual, reciprocated, lasting. I want it to be requited. I want it to be real and not illusional. I want it to be consummated, by God's grace.

I want my love to be all of the things that the past love was not. So I will love again, and it will be better and it will not be the same, and nothing ever will.

And this doesn't mean there won't be precious things that you'll not have in another. There will be, and you will cherish them with a fond memory. Someday.

And healing does not mean forgetting. There are various scars, big and small, from big things and small things, that I'll never forget. I remember the pain of some of them and only the events of the other. But I healed. And the pain is different, and depending on how I carry myself, it may not be that painful at all.

But sometimes I hold myself a certain way and it stings and I nurse the scar and I remember.

But I have healed.

We heal. We remember. We live to see another day, love another love as so many before us have. We hurt, we smart with shame, with regret, in memory. But I'd live it again if I had the chance.

Healing happens, especially for those of us who are young. As long as we're alive, we do.

I lost a love that was the sweetest and most innocent and most replete I'll ever know. I see his wife as one of the luckiest women I'll ever know. But I cherish that love, through remembrances of tears and pain, because of the sweetness and innocence of it that I would not live if we had, in fact, been together, and that I'll never live again with another man. It existed in the time that it should, and was beautiful because of it, and nestled in the warm summer breezes in an apartment without air conditioning, I'll close my eyes and think of those times when we were kids and I was so in love with him and he smiled at me and it will feel almost like it did the first time he told me he'd miss me.

And I'll go to sleep in remembrance of wistful musings and in anticipation of new loves and new sensations to come.