HEALING...

[Brandell]

What exactly is it? What does it involve? How do you do it?

 

I want to heal but I also feel nearly dead with grief. Where does healing and despair meet?

 

Healing is a state of mind. It seems to me to be almost a state of denial i.e "I am fine.. la de da.. i won't think about this.. I'll keep busy... etc."

 

Healing... bah? what we are talking about here is time... not healing.

 

I am devastated over my breakup. I have NO idea how to heal (and neither do any of you).

 

All I am hoping is that time will numb the pain.

 

Nobody on this board who is even halfway sane knows that "healing" means nothing more than time.

 

We miss them and we still love them and we feel hurt and we ALWAYS will and no amount of trips to the gym will change it.

 

Accept it.

 

We are eternally scarred.

[tere]

Sorry to hear about your breakup, hope you are doing better.

 

Time sure makes you heal... but in my opinion healing is much more than time - is allowing yourself know that you will be fine whatever it happens... activities do help... because their aim is to make you feel better about yourself...

Healing is knowing that your life has changed and that you can continue, memories will always be there in your heart but make memories something that let you learn and go on.

It is not "pretending to be alright" because deep inside you know that there are things that hurt, sooner or later those feelings will arise and let you down again in similar situation... it is about self-growth.

[DaisyB]

I agree that we are changed forever. Any chance of "getting back to our old selves" (or our old relationships) is out of the question. . . we will never be our old selves because we have been changed by a new experience. The same with our relationships. . . even if we do end up back together with our exes, it will never be the same as it once was.

 

During past break-ups, I remember that my least favorite question from others was "Are you over him yet?" (No one has asked that about this break-up. . . maybe the answer is just too obvious.) I hated that question because it seemed like I would never really be "over" anybody. The hurt would fade, and I would move on, but the relationship would always be part of who I am.

 

I also agree that healing has more to do with time and less to do with trips to the gym, new clothes, or new hobbies. We can't force ourselves to heal quickly. Sometimes those new things help, and sometimes they feel like cheap fixes, like giving someone a band-aid when he's had his arm cut off. I've been trying to run everyday, but there are some days when I know I need to sit in my room and cry instead -- and that's what I do. I try to let out the bad emotions as they come, but I try not to wallow in them, either. Somedays it's hard to know if I'm succeeding.

 

We all heal at different rates, so while some of us here may genuinely be doing much better after 6 months, some of us may still be hurting a lot. Time really does help. . . you just can't speed up the process. So if you feel like keeping busy is causing you to avoid the pain, let yourself experience the pain for a while. It's okay not to say "everything's fine." (Whenever I talk to my mom, she always asks me if I'm happy. I have answered no for the past five months. She hates that I'm unhappy, but I'd rather give her an honest response than a fake one. I will be happy again, sometime. Just right now, I'm not.)

 

Hang in there, Brandell. A day at a time.