I Thought I Was Done With That

And then it came back. For no particular reason. The worst part is — it didn’t even ask if it was a good time.

There’s one thing that always catches me off guard. Even though it really shouldn’t by now.

I think I’ve moved past something — and then something completely small, a song, a sentence, someone’s handwriting on a piece of paper — and suddenly I’m back where I thought I no longer was.

It’s not a breakdown. It’s not drama. It’s more like walking down the street and stopping because you thought you saw someone you haven’t seen in years.

A second, maybe two.
And then you keep walking.

But something from that pause stays in your body a little longer.

For a long time, I thought that pain coming back meant you weren’t done with it. That somewhere inside you, something was still unresolved, waiting for you to look at it directly and say, okay, I understand, you can go now.

Maybe.

But more and more, it seems like it’s not quite that simple.

Some pain doesn’t ask to be solved. It just asks to be acknowledged when it shows up. To not pretend it isn’t there. To not immediately reach for a thought that will cover it — something useful, something that proves you’ve grown.

Because that covering — that’s what keeps it fresh.

Pain that comes back doesn’t mean you haven’t healed. It means you were alive enough to let something truly touch you.

There’s something ironic in it. We’ve always wanted the ending — I’m over it. As if getting over something is the same as winning. As if you got the trophy that proves it no longer exists.

But pain doesn’t work like a competition. No finish line. No score. No winner.

There’s only — time passes, and then it doesn’t hurt constantly. And then it hurts occasionally. And then you think it’s over. And then something smells the way it smelled back then, and you realize that done isn’t the same as gone.

I’ve learned, slowly and reluctantly, to stop trying to explain why it came back. Why now, why this, why me.

Sometimes there’s no answer. Or the answer exists, but isn’t useful.

And then the only thing you can do is sit with it for a while. Do not call someone immediately to distract yourself. Don’t reach for your phone.

Let it move through you instead of blocking it at the door.

It passes. It always passes. Just not as quickly as we’d like.

And sometimes I think — maybe it’s not even bad that it comes back. Maybe it’s just proof that it was real. That it wasn’t something you imagined, or exaggerated, or should have gotten over faster.

It happened. And it left something behind.

And that something, sometimes, without warning, without reason, knocks.

And I open the door.

Not because I have to.
Not because it’s comfortable.
More because I know it’s coming in either way.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.