Betrayal, Pain, and Healing

Having to step outside your comfort zone to learn to trust someone. You become comfortable with trusting them and you let them get close. You tell them things you would usually keep to yourself and yourself only. Then one day they betray you, they tarnish your name. They cause you an enormous amount of  pain that you never thought you could feel, and a part of you dies. Physically you don’t smile or laugh as much. Mentally you shut people out and push them away before they get close. Spiritually you lose part of your sparkle. A part of you dies, with your memories of them. Then, you grieve. Man do you grieve. Most nights you’ll fall asleep in a slump as you try to liquify your thoughts to nothing. But your mind is racing, wondering how they seem perfectly okay with the situation even though you’re taking it personally. Knowing you would never do that to them, in any lifetime. You wake up still, with tears rolling down your face like a waterfall, eyes so puffy and swollen you’re blinded. Never could you have thought your heart could physically hurt. It feels like their safe and warm arm is wrapped around you as they drive a knife with all their “love” through your heart. 

Everyone will tell you it’ll get better in time, and they are one hundred percent correct. But no one wants to believe it in the moment. You spend your days going through old photographs, reading old text messages, you even stalk their social media to see what they’re up to. They seem happy, while you feel like you’re going through hell. For you, you were a single chapter in their life book, while they were a handful of chapters in your life book. Some blame themselves as part of the grieving process. They’ll try and find a way to pin it on themselves instead of facing the truth. You can’t change a person. Let that sink in for a second. You cannot change a person. Life changes people. We are meant to get hurt, we are meant to crumble, and we are meant to fall down. And then we’re given the decision of staying down here in this hole we’ve buried for ourselves and crawled into, or we can start rebuilding and climbing back to the top. I chose the second option. I chose to rebuild myself, but stronger. I chose to learn from the pain. I chose to grow from the mentally draining lessons. I chose me. That is how we heal. We choose ourselves, first.