The healer

"I healed myself."

It has been a long while
since I last wrote about you.

But silence never meant forgetting.

There were still nights when your name quietly crossed my mind,
when memories found their way back
through the smallest things—
a song, a place, a familiar feeling.

For some time, I sat with these feelings
and tried to understand what they were asking of me.

Perhaps, I thought,
I needed to stop thinking about you.

Not because I stopped caring.

But because, somewhere along the way,
I realized that I needed to care for myself, too.

So I began to heal in the little ways I knew.

I laughed with my friends.
I filled my days with things to do.
I allowed myself to discover new places,
new conversations,
new people.

Sometimes, I even tried to let someone new
stand where your memory used to be.

It was not easy.

There were days when I thought I was healing,
only to find myself bleeding from the same wound again.

There were nights when I convinced myself
that I had finally let you go,
only to wake up with your memory
still quietly living inside me.

But perhaps healing was never about forgetting.

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Perhaps it was about learning
how to remember without hurting.

And somewhere between the laughter,
the busy days,
the new faces,
and the quiet nights—

I finally understood something.

I had spent so long waiting for someone
to heal the wounds they had never meant to leave behind.

Yet all this time,
the person I was waiting for
was me.

Maybe that is what a healer is.

Someone who must touch their own scars
before learning how to treat them.

And perhaps I am still learning.

Perhaps some wounds are not meant to disappear completely.

Maybe they are meant to become reminders
of how deeply we once cared,
how much we once loved,
and how far we have come.

So no,
I may not have forgotten you.

But I am no longer waiting for you
to become the reason I heal.

This time,
I choose myself.

And perhaps,
that is the quietest kind of healing—

to finally become
the person who saves me.

-mell