I used to think healing was a destination. A place I'd reach where my mind would be clear and my heart whole. Imagine my horror when I realized that no...healing is pain.

It's uprooting. It's tearing down. It's realization. It's discovering that the whole house has to come down and the foundation must be reworked. That would be any homeowner's worst nightmare.

Healing was mine.

You think you need to recover from one thing...and then you realize that no...there's more underneath. There's mold and all things festering, but you haven't seen it because you've covered it up with so many "It's fine"s throughout the years.

Healing sounds nice in books. In poetry. As paintings. But in life, it is not. Healing will have you wishing you never asked the pain to go in the first place.

It hurts.

And you keep that idea of that golden destination at the front of your mind, in hopes of reaching it one day.

And sometimes you do. Sometimes you do reach that place...but it won't look like what you think it does.

Healing can be waking up and the weight that used to sit on your chest is no longer there. You get through your day quietly...uneventfully...and then it hits you. You don't miss them anymore.

Or, the phone rings...it's your mother and you answer the call without panicking. And when the conversation is done you realize...she doesn't scare me anymore.

Or you show up at church, see the man you almost married, and you smile. You hear him preach and your chest remains still. You laugh after service and all those years...the pain...the tears...have led you to this moment where you smile at each other and mean it. You discuss your new partner and when he leaves...life continues. Healing is a stranger we hear of, dream of, but never recognize when she arrives.

She comes in quietly, after all the tears, the upheaval, the tantrums. She slips in and sits in the spot you'd reserved for her. The spot you'd stopped watching because you didn't think she'd come.

And one day you enter the room, greet her casually, grab your things, and head for the door. You stop, turn, and she smiles at you as she says, "I told you I'd come."

I never thought that I would heal.

At one point, I thought that I would remain broken. Wounded. Lost. But as I look back on the years, I see that healing had actually been there all along. Setting her space up gradually. In teary conversations with friends. Cups of coffee and Grey's Anatomy reruns. Endless therapy sessions. Countless prayers. The days I said yes. The days I said no.

Each step was another part of her coming. And even now, I know she isn't fully there. There's still more of her to come.

And I'll keep taking it one day at a time. Knowing that she'll come.