I think many of us have wanted everything to go back to how it used to be in a long time, right?
Covid-19 changed everything, and life has been anything but normal for little over a year now.
For some of us, a bit longer and for others a bit shorter.
I have been very lucky, and my daily life has changed little, but I know that is not the case for a lot of you out there. I know many still work from home, and even though I personally find that idea rather appealing, I have also seen how lonely it can be for others and how they struggle every day to get through it.
This has made me think a lot about what people expect of the future, and it surprised me that most people seem to just want covid-19 to go away so that we can go back to how things used to be. I don’t know why anyone would think that’s even possible.
I am not saying it won’t get better, but how can anything go back to how it used to be? Are we not all different from who we were 2 years ago? We can’t go back unless we somehow get a functional time machine – I don’t suppose you got one of those hidden away somewhere, do you?
Healing isn’t restoring something to how it used to be, but mending it and creating something similar and yet slightly different. You can never go back in time, only forwards. Even if we could go back in time, what good would it do? We have changed and going back won’t be able to change us back.
Our choices, did we not make them to the best of our abilities at the time? We can only make different choices when we change.
Lately, I feel like I have struggled a lot with this.
Well, what I struggle with is figuring out what I can change about myself and what I cannot. I cannot change, it would seem, some of the things I wish I could change. I do need to change, because I believe that in change I might find the healing that has so far eluded me.
What do I need to change about myself to heal the hurt I still carry inside myself? I do not know.
Knowing that healing isn’t about returning to what used to be does make me feel a bit relieved though. My past mistakes were all made because I didn’t know any better, but I do now. I can bring this knowledge with me and hopefully I won’t have to make the same mistakes again – I get to go out and make entirely different mistakes.
After much consideration, I came to a rather surprising conclusion: A life without mistakes would be boring, I think.
Honestly, I do hope that the mistakes I make in the future will be painless for everyone involved and only serve as a silly memory when I grow old. Or perhaps they can be mistakes that bring great happiness instead of unhappiness. I doubt any of us are that lucky, however.
I might have said this before, but we all make mistakes in life and striving to live without ever making a mistake is both impossible and strenuous. The most important thing is not whether we make mistakes or not, it is simply how we deal with the aftermath of our mistakes – the scale or importance of the mistake is not relevant, our response to our previous actions are.
I don’t think everyone would agree, but this is truly what I believe, and I have lived by it as best I can for most of my life.
That doesn’t mean I have not done things I am ashamed of or failed to do the right thing after I hurt someone’s feelings, but I have always done my best to be loyal and honest to the people I have in my life.
Sometimes, after I made a mistake, I made even more mistakes only making everything worse, and there are times when in the end, the best thing I could do was simply leave because I only continued to make things worse -it doesn’t really matter if it was unintentional.
Sometimes, the best thing we can do is remove ourselves from a situation. We all have our limitations and I have definitely learned a lot from those situations – a lot that I pray I never forget, because I never want to be in those kinds of situations again. I wish to free myself from those painful memories and not make more of them in the future.
Herein lies the paradox of healing – how do we remember it so that we can make different choices in the future, while forgetting the unnecessary pain that we continue to hold onto in our hearts? Forget or remember, can we do both?
I think, what I have to do to heal is really just to become stronger. I am not saying I am weak, or that those of us who are still troubled by our past are weak, because I do not believe that we are.
We are alive and that makes us strong. We didn’t give up, even though we wanted to, and that makes us strong.
I am saying that I want to become stronger so that I can move on and live a better life in the future. I need to remember some things, because those memories are part of what makes me stronger today – they ensure I do not make similar, or worse, mistakes in the future.
In time, that hateful past will truly be nothing more than a memory, even though at this moment it still feels like it is a part of my present. I want to be stronger so that I can finally let go of it.
Why is it that forgiving oneself is so difficult in spite of a strong desire to heal the broken pieces of my soul?
I did not do all those things that happened to myself, nor did I really let it happen willingly, so why can I forgive others for what they did to me, when I cannot forgive myself for not being strong enough or clever enough to protect myself from harm?
I searched for healing in many different places, but in the end, I can only come to the conclusion that nothing will ever be the same again and that that is okay. Not only am I different, but the world also doesn’t look the same to me anymore. I wanted to find a safe place to belong, a place I could be happy and find healing, but no matter what I try to do, I can’t seem to fit in anywhere.
Every place I go, every person I meet, every hope or dream I have, nothing can give me the healing I wanted. The only thing I haven’t done yet is go to myself for healing and in this way, I become my own last and final hope – the one place I will always fit in is within myself. I will become stronger, and I will find a way to live with my past, because in a way, I already have.
I made it this far, why not go even further?
Why not find peace as well as happiness? Am I being greedy now? I hope not.
