Like a lost file in an archive, your most painful memories rest somewhere nearly untraceable in your head for months or even years, without having any effect on you. Although they are always there; somehow they cannot touch or reach you. Hovering around invisibly, almost as if long forgotten. You are doing beautifully fine, life is good and things are looking up. Besides, compared to what some other people have been through, your story, your problem: it seems unworthy to even mention.
I have never been a self-pity kind of person.
But then again, the time will come when the winds change and the files that appeared to have been forgotten about, run their stories clearer and louder than ever before. When something or someone has hurt you so deeply, there is no such thing as forgetting. There is no healing, not even scars. Forever you will carry it with you, waiting inside for a moment of silence, a moment of weakness to rearise.
I hadn’t thought of it for many months.
My hands turn into fists, My heart is beating fast, my body is tense and my jaws are clenched together. I am laying on the couch with my knees pulled up to my chin. My eyelids firmly closed. If only I could relax my jaws, I would cry. Right now I can’t even breathe, I can’t hear. It feels like I’m burning, screaming in silence and suddenly feeling like it all happened only yesterday.
The sound of a ticking clock reaches me.
Finally I can take a deep breath.
My body relaxes. I shiver and tears start streaming down my face. It feels like I’ve been away for hours instead of seconds. It reminds me of sleeping.
Your heart never forgets, for time does not exist. A realization that puzzles me time after time. Sometimes in a good way, luckily.
Joanna J - Giving you my words 
Dit is op Grey Matters Tales of a Proper Villain herblogden reageerde:
For those who say time heals all wounds, some beg to differ.
Dit is op Finding my inner Babygirl herblogden reageerde:
Powerful
I believe time heals – but I do not believe it erases completely the traces of pain or hurt that was. Those stay with us I believe forever, they just fade and find a deep place to live. They are the traces we use in some way to learn from – to see where we are and how far we have come and where we need to go.
I had a moment just like this this morning. I had thought I was over it, but the memory of the pain is enough. I am still feeling the ebb and flow of that remembered pain tonight.
Wow yes tiring isn’t it? But sort of cool complete strangers can relate;)
Absolutely
So true….
Dit is op MySubmittingSoul herblogd.
Your heart never forgets, for time does not exist…love this:)
I feel this way too
Dit is op Y Writes Whatever! herblogd.
You are right.Time doesn’t heal us. Distance make the pain burn less. I believe the scars left make us wiser if we are lucky. I like your honest and direct thoughts.
This is so beautiful.
Beautiful. Iyengar on pain:
“Pain is there as a teacher, because life is filled with it. In the struggle alone, there is knowledge. Only when there is pain will you see the light. Pain is your guru. As we experience pleasures happily, we must also learn not to lose our happiness when pain comes. As we see good in pleasure, we should learn to see good in pain. Learn to find comfort even in discomfort. We must not try to run from the pain but to move through and beyond it. This is the cultivation of tenacity and perseverance, which is a spiritual attitude toward yoga. This is also the spiritual attitude toward life.”
Although he is mainly speaking of asanas done as part of a yoga practice, the principle applies to all pain whether it be physical or emotional. While we don’t actively seek it, neither do we run from the pain that is an inevitable part of all growth and change. When you have known pain, you have known compassion, something shared joys cannot teach us. Count your pain as a blessing. When everything else is stripped away, the essential is revealed,
Dit is op Kjerne herblogden reageerde:
Since the creation of my blog, my motto has been and still is:
“Distance is what gives us perspective, insight and makes us appreciate beauty from afar. This is how I understand people who say that time heals all wounds.”
So of course, when I read the opposite in your words, I just had to respond to that. Not to convince or lecture, no, out of the sincere hope that you might find some sunshine hidden in the rafters.
What caught my attention first is the businesslike comparison by labelling important life experiences as files in an archive. An archive, locked behind door and key, dusty and old information nobody really cares about until a future mistake is discovered. Then all of the sudden people dive into the archives to find places of reference, to better understand the present. According to free will however, one could have given any life experience the attention, devotion and consideration while it was taking place or shortly after it, without ever having the need to lock and hide it inside an archive. I feel and think that perspective and words matter a lot, so the words and images we choose to create our inner world determines the value we give to life, our lives. I love my painful memories just as much as my loving memories, I cradle them equally and try to let them teach me new ways to go forward. Things are what they are, so even when choosing a model like file & archive, why not make the image of letters to yourself. Clothes you like in a closet? Food you like on a large plate, waiting outside in the sun near the pond? Why file & archive?
To keep matters in perspective I do say to myself certain things to be aware of the suffering of others and that the degree of discomfort which I experience stands not in comparison with that of many others. At the same time however I think it is very important to be aware of self, the importance of self. And that even those thoughts to keep perspective should not prevent an individual from taking their own reality, their world, dreams, hopes, emotions and life experience seriously. We are who we are, and our primary responsibility is to our own well-being. Everything we experience in life feels to us just as important as we want to make it, but this principle works both ways. Giving lower value to our own emotions than realistically would be required by the reality we live in means disrespecting our own life experience at that time in life. Finding the balance between how serious an event or experience is and the amount of emotional response required is not an easy task, although very important. It is that balance which frees our minds from doubt and twisted images of self or low self esteem.
I smiled when you describe how old emotions wait inside, hiding for moments of ‘weakness’, so they can rise again and cause discomfort. Does it mean we are weak when we experience discomfort? Are we as people weak when we get hurt, go through periods of strong unwanted and very necessary emotions, because of what we have to deal with? I would say “No”. Not even a firm and loud spoken “No”. Just a soft spoken and well considered ‘no’. To be vulnerable, to show and not hide, to live and not die, to speak and not hold silence, there is strength in all those things. There is no weakness there, only strength. Weakness to me equals not acting, keeping silence out of fear for what needs to be said, denying ourselves, to aim our eyes to the ground while we know we have the right to stand proud for whatever we might be in life. Denying the truth of our existence, this I could call weakness.
I think many of us have all been in this place in your mind you write about. The physical response to emotion rising, deep from the core, is something I personally recognize. In my experience it is the physical response of emotional chaos. It happens when we do not control our emotions and thoughts but when we let them control us. This is not weakness, unfortunately it is in my opinion mainly a result of our social construct about how we deal with life. I hope you can find some comfort in the knowing that you can decide to be in control, everyone can decide this and gain this control through practice. Every person can learn to deal with everything that lingers in their emotional memory, to say what needs to be said and to treat themselves with the dignity they deserve.
There is a deep power in tears, keep them flowing, feed them, drink water. Never fear your tears, because when the sad, angry, hateful, spiteful and indifferent tears have all been cried, then there will be a place where tears can flow because of joy, beauty and love.
Time is an abstract construct to tell us nothing. The importance of time is not what has happened or what could have happened. There is only here and now and the question what you will do with the time that has been given to you. What will you do?