“I will never get over this.”
When people were ripped from my life, when my heart was broken, when my dream job slipped through my fingers – I sat before my mother, my brother, my friends, and with tear-filled eyes exclaimed:
“I will never get over this!”
Deep pain is void of foresight; the only tense it knows is the present. We, its victims, forget past times when we persevered through struggle and are blind to the possibility of a happier future. The pain overwhelms the body, flooding our eyes and wrenching our guts. It isolates us–no one can understand our pain because no one who has felt this way could have survived it.
The first time I experienced my emotional mortality was when my grandmother passed away. She was more than the woman who gave me cookies and spoiled me when my mother wasn’t around, she was someone I saw almost every day for most of my childhood. She was a second mother to me, which was reflected in the name I called her, “nënë,” which means “mother” in Albanian.
Up until her final second on earth I believed she wouldn’t leave me. Even as the machines surrounding her hospital bedside cried out with grief and the faces of my family members grew hollow, I remained in a comforting sense of denial. It wasn’t until my cousin squeezed my hand, confirming my inevitable heartache, that I even allowed myself to cry. As the tears fell, I felt a pang in my chest and an etching scrape across my heart which read:
“I will never get over this.”
These words ached in me for a long time, weighing on me heavily in the sort of way that slows breathing – that slows living. However, as time went on, the pain began to dull in a way I could not have predicted. It changed not because I missed my grandmother any less, or because she was any less important to me, but because time gave me perspective. As the pages of the calendar turned, I was able to think of my grandmother outside of my grief at her loss. My beautiful memories of moments we shared came forward. My bitterness dissipated and was replaced by gratitude for the long love-filled life she lived, and for how many people I love are alive and well.
When my heart was broken for the first time, it felt like I stepped into emotional quicksand. I didn’t know how to pull myself out of my hurt because I didn’t think it was possible. I found myself sinking deeper and deeper into helplessness. I slept to avoid thoughts and feelings but they were always there in the morning to greet me with the sunrise. I was desperate for the pain to dissolve, and begged those around me to share stories of their first heartbreaks: How did you cope? Did it get better? How long did it take?
I sought an expiration date for my pain, but nobody could provide one because everyone is different and all of our pains are unique. Not that it would have mattered anyway – I ignored everything that anyone said to me about how my life would go on. When people pulled out the time heals all wounds card, I rolled my eyes and buried the cliché under piles of sand. They were prescribing a placebo, an empty sugar pill to trick me into feeling better. Maybe that worked for some people, but I was immune to time…
Or so I thought.
I woke up one day to find optimism greeting me with the sunrise. I discovered that my heartbreak had expired, and it was time to throw it out and make room for the happiness I was now able to feel.
Pain doesn’t last forever.
Read that again.
Pain does not last forever.
Thoughts that once had me bedridden, no longer make me even bat an eye. Things once too painful to speak of, are now stories that I openly share. I found healing catharsis in opening up about my pain. The support of family and friends, setting new goals to work towards, and shifting focus from the sadness of the past to the good in the present can all help to speed up the healing power of time.
And for the pain that can’t ever be fully erased – for the pain that once stabbed me so brutally that the scar can never fully heal – maybe the mark will always remain, but the skin underneath the scar is thicker. Pain helped me grow stronger. It forced me to confront new obstacles and over time, pushed me to overcome them.
Time helps us discover new ways of thinking and feeling, and allows for new opportunities at happiness.
I have learned that pain is not quicksand, it is the sand in the hourglass. It needs time to run out, but when it does, happiness will inevitably be found again.