healing

how is a person supposed to heal oneself when her world has been turned on its head? this is a question i've been asking myself for weeks now and it's a question i should already have the answers to. i don't intend to imply that my life is anything different than yours; i face each day and each situation as it comes. some days are good: filled with blessing and laughter and comforting familiarity, while others quite frankly, are not. i don't pretend to have dealt with anything truly horrible. years of philosophical and anthropological study serve to remind me daily how ordinary and commonplace my life and my experiences are. i am a middle-class, white female raised in the suburbs of america. i have a solid family base and close friends that love and support me. i have never been abused or mistreated. i am well-educated with a good job and a strong sense of self-worth. and yet, bad things happen- routine is interrupted, hope is shattered, trust is broken. my question is how does a person heal herself from the daily blows that weaken her fortitude?

i can't seem to remember how i've managed it in the past when regular old life events come into play and shatter the world i've come to know. i know my strategies for survival include deep hibernation, distraction and avoidance through books, tv and movies, over-working, under and/or over-sleeping, all of these things until the days continue to march past without me noticing their passing. pretty soon, days turn to months and a new life seems to be created. but where exactly does the healing take place? does it have to do with how many days pass, or how successful i've been in distraction? is it possible that none of my tactics are effective and healing occurs somewhere else entirely? are my plights truly universal and therefore i'm just melodramatic to say i feel like my world's been shattered, or has my "survival mode" forced me into some sort of vicious cycle, where i can't manage to grow without first having main tenets of my life stripped away?

as i am currently in the middle of one such cycle, i find myself longing very deeply for the life i've lost. some of it has been taken from me, unable or unwilling to return no matter how i fight for it, while some of it i chose to leave behind out of necessity. still, i can't seem to want anything more than to awake in my own home, surrounded by my own things- my lamp, my coffee pot, my garden... to awake in this life next to the boyfriend i love who smiles and calls me darlin', to ride my bike down familiar streets to the job that's become so mundane it's the only thing i can find to complain about.

but i know this feeling will pass- even if i don't know how or when. it's passed before. i've adapted: i've relied on the fact that i still have plenty in life to appreciate, i've continued to go to sleep each night and awake each morning, to make new friends, date new people, move to new cities and new places and re-establish a partially new life. i know i can do all these things because i've done them before. but i'm tired of needing to. i'm tired of feeling broken, or needing to harden my emotions to the harsher conditions in life. and i'm tired of falling in love again, hoping that maybe this time the someone i choose will continue to choose me back regardless of circumstance.

it's just that i don't know how to survive any other way. i feel like i have to cut away anything surrounding the painful area so that i can manage to move on. is that why you fled? was i apart of painful reminders and are you just that much better at moving on more quickly and more completely than i am? i hate that my head wonders these things and hate even more that my heart's too vulnerable to withstand this.