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In my healing era (but really just living life era)

In my healing era (but really just living life era)

Yukta Parikh
July 19, 2024

They say healing is a lifelong journey…which would be correct. But I don’t like the idea that we spend the rest of our lives trying to improve ourselves. I want to just be. My healing era is about learning to just be. Not looking for the next distraction or escape because, in reality, that’s what my past “healing eras” have looked like. Instead of facing my feelings, I covered it up by burying myself in hobbies. I read 5 books in one week just so I wouldn’t have a moment of free brain space. It was easier to hide than face the compounding effects of unaddressed trauma.

There’s no step-by-step manual or routine to follow to feel happy and healthy. However, I feel I’ll constantly be looking for directions that are already in my heart for a while. I’m learning that healing is more about accepting where you are right now and realizing that it can be better. A yoga class or a hot shower won’t do that for me. Sitting with the discomfort is what will. Finding a healthy coping mechanism is what will.

Healing for me right now is facing my fears. I was so used to keeping the peace, I didn’t know I had a voice and a way to change the direction of my life. I thought I was picking and choosing my battles, but really I wasn’t choosing any battles. I was letting my mom, colleagues, and friends walk all over me because I couldn’t speak up. Healing means finding my voice, the one that I beat into submission over the last 20 years. This realization came to me very recently, and that’s another thing about therapy. It’s forcing me to face the fractures I didn’t realize were there.

Therapy showed me that I’ve been navigating my life through fear. And I’ve decided that I no longer want to live in fear of what others might think of me. I want to live in love, light, joy, and happiness. But to get there, I have to find it within myself. And I have to be unafraid to disturb the peace.

External validation directed most of my life until this point. I realize that almost everything I did for most of my life was for someone else. I worked hard in school for my parents. I went to college for my parents. I lived at home for a year for my parents. I decided I would live in Chicago for my parents. But what did I want? I had no clue back then, and sometimes I still don’t. My parents wanted success for me so I wanted that too because I didn’t know I could want something else. Now I have the chance to find out what I want.

I used to think healing was just doing everything right and perfect. But I never felt better. It would work for a week. I would get all my assignments done, I would make it to every workout, and do everything right, but only for a week. Then something would happen that would trigger something in me and I would lose all my progress. I was striving for perfection but in the healing process, there is no perfection. There is just progress. Right now it feels like for every step forward, there are 3 steps back. And that’s okay. At least I’m moving in a direction that I want to move in.

All I really know is that I’m on the road to finding myself. This path that I’m on is not going to miraculously cure me of everything I went through. I’ll never be the person I was before the trauma, but now I get to meet a version of myself I never would have otherwise. And she’s pretty cool.