I've Learned How to Carry It

I came to a realization recently, and it's one that made me a little uncomfortable because it forces me to be honest with myself.

I don't think I actually get OVER things.

I think I just get PAST them.

For most of my life, I've worn resilience like a badge of honour. Life would throw something devastating my way, I'd fall apart for a minute, pick myself up, dust myself off, and keep moving. That's what survival looked like. That's what strength looked like. At least that's what I told myself.

The problem is that surviving something and healing from it aren't the same thing, and I think somewhere along the way I started confusing the two.

When I look back at some of the biggest hurts in my life, I can see that I never really dealt with many of them. I didn't sit with the grief long enough to understand it. I didn't process the betrayal. I didn't unpack the abandonment, the heartbreak, the disappointments, or the things that changed me forever. I accepted them for what they were because, at the time, I didn't have another choice.

Life was still happening.

There were kids to raise, responsibilities to meet, bills to pay, work to do, people depending on me, and fires that needed putting out. I couldn't afford to disappear into my feelings every time something painful happened. Most of us don't get that luxury. So I adapted.

I accepted that some people would never apologize. I accepted that some relationships would never become what I hoped they could be. I accepted that some wounds weren't going to magically disappear just because I wanted them to. I accepted a lot of things because acceptance felt healthier than fighting reality.

Now I'm starting to wonder if some of that acceptance was actually avoidance wearing a more socially acceptable outfit.

Because the truth is, those things didn't disappear. They just got packed away. They became boxes stacked neatly in the corners of my mind where I didn't have to look at them every day. Most of the time I don't even notice they're there. Then something happens—a conversation, a memory, a smell, a random Tuesday afternoon—and suddenly I'm reacting to something that has absolutely nothing to do with the moment I'm standing in.

That's usually when I realize it isn't gone at all.

I've simply learned how to carry it.

And maybe that's the part I'm struggling with right now. I've spent so much of my life proving to myself that I can survive anything that I never stopped to ask whether I should still be carrying all of it. Somewhere along the way, endurance became my default setting. I became so focused on getting through things that I never gave myself permission to heal from them.

The irony is that my life hasn't exactly become easier. There's always something happening. A new problem to solve. Someone who needs me. A responsibility that can't wait. The crises don't stop long enough for me to schedule a healing retreat and spend six uninterrupted months unpacking my emotional baggage.

Maybe that's part of why I've become so good at carrying things.

But lately I've started noticing that some of the things I'm carrying aren't heavy because they happened yesterday. They're heavy because I've been dragging them around for years. They're old hurts I've learned to live with so well that I stopped questioning whether I was supposed to keep carrying them at all.

And maybe that's the realization that's been sitting with me.

Not that life has finally slowed down enough for healing, because it hasn't. It probably never will. But maybe I've reached a point where I can no longer mistake endurance for healing. Maybe I've spent so many years proving that I can survive hard things that I never stopped to ask what happens after survival becomes a lifestyle.

Because surviving gets you through the storm.

It doesn't automatically repair the damage the storm left behind.

I don't have some profound conclusion here. I don't suddenly know how to unpack decades of hurt, disappointment, grief, betrayal, and loss. I don't know what healing looks like for every wound I've collected along the way.

What I do know is that getting past something and healing from it are two very different things, and I think I've spent most of my life mastering the first while assuming it meant I'd accomplished the second.

Maybe healing starts with recognizing the difference.

Maybe it starts with admitting that some things still hurt.

Maybe it starts with giving myself permission to stop calling every scar a lesson and every wound a strength.

Or maybe it simply starts with asking myself a question I've avoided for years:

What would happen if I stopped carrying things that no longer belong to me?

       🥰🫖 𝒥𝓊𝓈𝓉 ℛℯ𝒶𝓁𝒯ℯ𝒶