Ignited

Photo Credit: Eddie Caesar

There is something strange about the kind of grief that comes with losing yourself. You’re trying to survive without getting hurt again. Others don't notice it as much as you think. You still laugh at all the jokes, show up to work, attend all your classes, answer your friends' calls and go on day by day, quietly wondering when you stopped feeling like yourself. Emotional trauma has its ways of changing the way we see people, messages and the world around the person staring back at us in the mirror. Sometimes, the hardest part of healing is realizing that the person you used to be is now a stranger. 

Experiencing a stab to the heart, especially at the hands of the one you trusted most, often makes us question the parts of ourselves that were never the problem. The questions surround our worth, our moral judgment, our ability to trust and love again. How could you not replay countless conversations, search for answers and wonder what you could have done differently? The quiet grows on you, and you become more guarded, less likely to let your walls down for anything or anyone. Without realizing it, we build them around the parts of ourselves that used to be the easiest to share. We convince ourselves that if no one ever gets that close enough to us again, we will finally be safe from all the pain. 

But there is a difference between losing yourself to fear and protecting yourself with boundaries. 

Becoming yourself again does not happen instantly. No specific time of day will suddenly make you feel whole again. Healing is often quiet; it happens in small moments: falling in love with your favorite song again, having alone time without feeling guilty, laughing without anxiety beating in your chest, or realizing an old moment no longer controls the mood of the day. Sometimes, healing means getting through the difficult moment without blaming yourself for having feelings in the first place.  

Healing is often imagined as returning to who you were before everything happened. We want the innocence that was stolen from us, the ability to trust without hesitation, and the version of ourselves that didn’t overthink. However, remember that doesn’t mean you will return to who you were. It means becoming someone new without losing the qualities that made you who you were at the beginning. 

You can become more judicious without becoming cold and off-putting. You can draw your boundary lines without shutting everyone out. You can learn from the same hands that hurt you without letting them shape how you treat others after they're gone. What happened to you may be part of your story, but it isn't the whole story. 

One of the main parts of finding yourself again is learning to stop using your pain as proof that something has happened to you. Being affected by what happened doesn’t make you weak. Struggling to trust someone new doesn’t make you incapable of love. A difficult day doesn’t erase the progress you have made on your journey. It's all a work in progress, even when the world is expecting you to have everything lined up. 

You also have to let go of the person you became out of survival instinct. Maybe you started apologizing for everything because you were afraid and wanted to keep the peace. Maybe you stopped expressing your feelings because it was easier to agree and move on. Maybe you convinced yourself that asking for less would make you easier to love. Remember that those habits come from a version of you who developed them to get through difficult times. Don’t be angry with that version of yourself; offer compassion instead. You did what you could with the time and choices you had. 

Slowly, begin to choose things differently. 

Say what plagues your mind. Make room for the joyous things in life. Spend time with those who let you be 100% yourself. Learn to recognize what love should require, not the constant proof of worth. Give yourself the patience, recognition, and care that you gave those who had your heart deeply. This could feel overwhelming; reach out to a trusted mental health professional or friend to help you navigate this. 

Most importantly, understand that you don’t have to earn your way back to the top. You don’t need a whole world of success, more patience, more forgiveness, or the ability to agree to establish peace. You deserve all of that now, even on the lowest days. 

There will be times when you miss who you were before. Let yourself feel the sadness, but don’t mistake it for proof that you’ll never feel complete again. The person you are becoming may look different from the person you remember. It's not a bad thing.

One day you will realize that you are no longer measuring your happiness by what it used to be. You won't need to organize your life around the emotional dangers that could come your way. You are just like everyone, living again. 

That's what becoming yourself again really means, not erasing the past or sitting there pretending that pain never existed. It's reaching a point where the bad experiences in your life no longer have a word in who you have become. 

You are still here, still you. You still have so much to discover about yourself, people you haven't met, and pieces of happiness you haven’t picked up yet. You are allowed to start over, even if it's a slow start.  

You aren’t the only person who survived these similar wounds. But you do get to decide what comes next.