The Myth of Healing
We talk a lot about "healing". But do we ever, really?
When I was sixteen, I fell off a rope swing in my aunt’s backyard. I had a mild concussion, bruised several ribs and had a partial tear of a muscle in my back. I suffered for years with muscle spasms, back pain, and mobility issues. Fortunately, I was young enough that recovery was possible. Once I started working out regularly in my 20s, lost a bit of weight, and began focusing on strength training, the back problem slowly got better.
Now, my back rarely hurts me at all, but the scar tissue is still there. It sits on the right side of my back, almost dead center, near where my ribcage and my spine meet. When I started to get occasional massages, one masseuse pressed into it and I let out a guttural sound. It wasn’t agonizingly painful, but a stark reminder of past pain, a twinge from deep within. The masseuse asked me if I had an existing injury, and I told him about the accident, more than a decade prior. He said I’d likely have tension and aches in that spot forever, and that massage can soften it, but it doesn’t reverse it entirely.
Scar tissue is gnarled, firm, and impenetrable. It looks different than the tissue that surrounds it. The job of healing is to build both softness and strength around the existing scars. There is no big reveal where you slough off the skin and find a new shiny self.
Healing doesn’t mean the scars go away. It is not a matter of erasing the past, or undoing what was done. It’s about learning how to live with it.
One of the things I hate the most about America is how we are encouraged to quantify everything. If we don’t frame things in terms of productivity or money (obviously, the two are equated, even though the former doesn’t necessarily engender the latter), if we can’t check it off the list of Shit to Do, then it doesn’t count. Everyone talks about self-care and healing and growth without actually thinking about what those things mean. We have made these things part of the Great Grift. Supplements, “life coaching”, crystals. Buy this and you will HEAL.
We have turned the lens on ourselves, perhaps to our detriment. We’ve made our worlds smaller. We’re cancelling plans and flaking on friends. We’re deciding that agoraphobia is self-care. That avoidance is better than conflict. We are always talking about accountability, but we are also shrinking access to the people who may hold us accountable in the first place.
Avoidance is easier than ever. Turn off the notifications. Don’t leave the house. Who needs to leave the house when underpaid gig employees can bring us anything and everything at a moment’s notice? We have the entertainment in our stupid little light boxes, whichever you prefer; Laptop, phone, iPad, big-ass TV.
We are asked to give things up - alcohol, vaping, coffee, processed food. No one tells you how exactly to replace those things, or even offers an alternative other than “recovery” and “longevity”. In these times, is longevity really a plus?
We watch as we are taken over by fascists, as our third spaces disappear, and as Peak TV is replaced with shows that you watch while you’re doing something else. But they sell all this to you as relaxing. They profit off of it.
Recovering. Actualizing. Healing.
But don’t be fooled. Verbs are not actions in and of themselves.
They sell us the verbs to keep us doing the one they like best.
Consuming.
If I made one mistake over the past few years, it was waiting for the day I would wake up and feel like “myself” again. What I realized is that my “self” was trained to adapt to a world designed for neurotypical people. My “self” overcompensated by prioritizing the needs of others without having the first clue what I needed. I have had to learn what I actually need and want from this world.
Somewhere in the last few months, I realized that I am not going to wake up one day and feel like my “old self”, simply because my old self is not useful to me anymore.
Don’t get me wrong, I admire so many things about that girl. I thank her for her service. I wouldn’t have what I have if not for her diligent spinning of plates, her ability to make and keep friends, and her steadfast commitment to our youthful delulu. She had hustle and grit. She believed that if she just worked harder, she would win the day eventually.
recently wrote a beautiful piece about doing less, and this resonated with me so strongly:So many of us have spent the last 20 years focused on productivity. We forgot that work won’t love us back no matter how loyal we are. I used to be so proud of my ability to endure bullshit and still churn out reliable, quality work that looked effortless. I thought if I just hit the next goal, got the next paycheck, met the next deadline, that one day my life would fall into place. I would be happy. But of course, I learned that’s a lie productivity culture loves to sell. Life and happiness actually need to be tended to. They should be your project, not whatever you do to pay the rent.
That girl I once was - who knew damn well that being a girl is more palatable than just a woman - took an awful lot of bullshit from people. She gave a lot of herself to people and jobs and goals that never gave back. She worked herself into what I’m pretty sure would have wound up being an early grave, if things had continued on as they were.
I don’t need to be that girl anymore.
I need to be the woman I’ve become.
Like everything that goes into being a woman, there is a cost.
I have never expected my relationships to be completely reciprocal at all times. It isn’t realistic to expect people to give you exactly as much as you give them, and vice versa, at all times. Looking for perfect symmetry when dealing with humans is a fool’s errand. Friendships are a give and take. Marriages. Creative partnerships. There will be times a person can give more and a time they can’t.
I liken it to a game of Tug of War, but the playing field wasn’t level. I would give everyone so much rope, yards and yards of rope, so there was more than enough for both people. But sometimes, people would gather all of it up on their side, and I was left with no choice but to try and yank it back to center. To achieve stasis.
More often than not, I found myself flat on my ass with bleeding, chafed palms. And somehow, I always found more rope, because the thought of losing another person in my life was so unbearable to me.
I know I haven’t been able to show up in the past few years in the way my friends and family are accustomed to. I know I have said no a lot. I have not always answered texts in a timely fashion. I have set boundaries. And I know that has been a struggle to adjust to. It’s been an adjustment for me, too. To be less available to them but more available to myself. I needed to show up for myself to get better.
I want to be available to everyone all the time. I have always prided myself on being a loyal friend. I was hoping that I would get some grace while I figured out my new normal. While I didn’t always get the grace I was hoping for, what I got was clarity. And that clarity came in handy when I felt that familiar tug of the rope, the fibers chafing against my scarred palms.
In the past, when I felt myself losing something, or someone, my instinct would be to regulate their emotions. To let people dictate my own story to me. To minimize my experience and my grief. To prioritize everyone else’s pain above my own. I would just pull that rope harder and harder, hoping things would turn out differently.
But now I’m tired of playing games. I’m grown. And something incredible happened when I felt the pull of that rope this time.
I simply let it go.
There are people in my life who don’t like the woman that replaced the girl they thought they loved. There was a time that would have gutted me, but now, I finally like myself. Why would I want someone around who doesn’t?
And yet, I struggle with the contradictions. I don’t think that you avoid pain by distancing yourself from people. I think that self-care can easily devolve into selfishness, no matter how well intentioned. Time and space can help you recover, but complete disconnection does the opposite. We see it with every new manifesto from lone terrorists, with every new oligarch building an apocalypse bunker, and with every new way to check out.
It feels like everything is crumbling. But what are we creating to counter that?
I’m not naïve enough to think art will save us. It’s gonna take a hell of a lot more than that. But in order to do that, we have to start rebuilding. That means meeting new people. Finding community in-person. Being vulnerable without being a pushover. Giving grace to our friends without being a punching bag. Making our art, or our food, or just making a better life for our kids.
For me, it’s simple: I want to be connected to people, but not at the expense of myself.
And it’s up to me to figure that out what that looks like.
I understand now what my time of healing was for. It wasn’t to go back to normal. It was to accept that I am in a new phase. I am halfway through my life, if I am lucky to live so long.
Letting go doesn’t mean anything is over. It means something else is beginning. I don’t need to hang on to anything that doesn’t serve me anymore. Now I need to really figure out what does.
So, am I “healed”? God no. What even is that?
Healed is a myth. Healing is the place you meet yourself, maybe for the first time.
Love this! Echoes many of my thoughts!
this is really insightful. I've had many of these thoughts as well. I used to wonder if I could ever really be healed. But you're right, it's meeting yourself where you are.