I thought healing would feel like freedom.
‚Like one morning I would wake up and not think about it anymore.
But that never happened.
The memory stayed. The ache stayed.
Even the silence stayed.
What changed was the way it lived inside me.
It stopped interrupting every beautiful moment.
"Stopped turning small things into heavy ones.
Stopped asking me to reopen wounds just to prove they hurt.
I still carry it sometimes, but now it walks beside me
instead of on top of me.
And maybe that's what healing is.
Not forgetting. Not erasing.
Just finally learning how to breathe
without breaking under the weight of it.