One day, you'll pick yourself up

Healing only happens when you’re ready

Feb 25, 2024

She was different. I know everyone says that about their crush — but she was. She was one of those girls who seemed outwardly confident but was actually shy and a bit of a tweak. One of those girls who took time to warm up, but when she did, she did.

The more time we spent together, the more she unveiled qualities that only had me fall harder. She could take a jab and give one. Laugh with you about nonsense one moment, then the next, challenge you in an intellectual debate. Discuss Shakespeare, Game of Thrones — everything in between. I could go on and on, but that’s how crushes are. A mystery that has us enamored, but despite the trail of crumbs, remains one we never solve.

I’ll spare you the details of my “courtship” for another time. Lord knows how much I obsessed over them during those months. Analyzing every interaction we had in an agonizing “She likes me, she likes me not” back and forth. I was never one to leave assignments down to the wire, but this time, I did. Still finalizing how I’d tell her “I like you” during the car ride to her apartment the day before I left for summer break.

Human nature has us prepare ourselves for the worst, for the inevitable “I don’t feel the same way” — but never the best.

“I like you too.”

I went into that summer high. Floating. I’d wake up each morning and immediately reach for my phone to read the Snapchat message (a sign of the times) from her. Our time zones were flipped, so we only chatted in the mornings and at night. But during the in-between, even as I was busy with an internship, I’d find a way to think about her. Half awake, half in a dream. Imagining what it’d be like to be with her when the fall semester came around.

But a few weeks before the semester started, I woke up to a message that pierced through the fog and brought me back to reality. Safe to say, when you’re riding high, you rarely prepare for the fall.

To say I was devastated would be an understatement. I’ve experienced pain before, but not that kind of pain. The pain of a first heartbreak. The pain of a fantasy crumbling apart.

I messaged her something about thanking her for her honesty and that “I understand” — but really, I didn’t.

I had no fucking clue.

Like any heartbroken 20-year-old college boy, I needed some sad boy music to complete the scene. As they say, life is a movie.

I put Post Malone’s unofficially released Goodbyes and Circles on repeat, and flattened out on the floor of my room. Holding everything in, despite my heart wanting to burst at the seams.

Just as I’d done throughout my life.

I used to wonder why my healing journey didn't start then. If it had, it would've saved me more headache, more pain, more heartbreak I’d experience with her. Years of a clumsy back and forth of interest. More sequels to the original that didn’t need to be made.

But really, they did. Even if they made zero sense at the time. We just rarely see the bigger picture when we’re so focused on the details. What happened and didn’t, who's in the wrong and who's in the right.

The familiar rough comfort of a shag-carpeted floor.

We seek comfort in familiarity, especially when we’re in pain. But comfort denies us the opportunity to allow the growth, the healing, that wants to emerge. Healing that subconsciously, we know will awaken long-held core wounds. Wounds containing pain that seem foreign, but show up each time our hearts are broken.

On the floor of my room, I wasn’t ready to face that pain yet. Wasn’t ready to face all these emotions I’d never sat with before. Emotions that only curtained a rag of demons that’d been taunting me throughout my life, begging for me to listen to their call.

Instead, I forced myself to feel nothing.

Instead, I drowned them out with Post Malone.

It’s easy to forget and lose touch with our true nature. We’re so conditioned to wanting things to happen now, to change now — especially when we’re in pain. That the moment we ask for it, it’ll be delivered to our doorstep within 48 hours. After all, we’re taught effort leads to results. Results that arrive on a definite timeline, not an indefinite one.

Life doesn’t work that way. Healing is unpredictable, unseeable. Total madness to the mind that craves certainty and form.

But all the while, a vital process is underway. All the experiences, the pain and heartbreak, are breaking down into nutrient-rich fertilizer for the fated seed of healing to be planted. A seed that will burst into the light when that last heartbreak cracks you open.

When you’re ready. Not a moment sooner. Not a moment later.

My initial heartbreak wasn’t enough. I needed to be split open again and again and again until I had no choice but to surrender to feeling everything. Feeling created a sliver of an opening for the pain to pierce through the layers of armor bolted to my heart. Giving way to the tender center.

I began to heal.

I wish I could tell you all this knowing you’d listen, but I know that’s not the case —not how life works. Because knowledge is simply cliche and empty platitude without conscious contact. Only by touching the stove one too many times do you finally say "I don't like being burned. Why do I keep doing it?"

In that moment, you’ve sat with the pain, peeked behind the curtain. You’ll encounter demons, and realize they’re not trying to damn you to Hell, but to bring you wisdom.

From wisdom, healing begins.

If you’re in pain right now, I don’t have any sound words for you. Perhaps I’m going against the grain here, but I encourage you to get burned over and over again. Have your heart broken over and over again. Even if you don’t feel this way, healing is beginning. You’re creating the conditions for it to take root. One day, the pain will pierce through. The sprout will emerge, and the healing journey will begin.

Not a moment sooner. Not a moment later.

Until then, go lay on the floor and listen to Post Malone.

You’ll pick yourself up when you’re ready.