There are those who grow so quietly hardly anyone will notice. Never broadcasting every step of their accomplishments, or making it something in need of praise or parading. They mend their broken heart in the dark. Where it’s quiet enough for them to try and make sense of why people are so painful. Their healing is done delicately, without being propped up by pity. It’s as subtle as the slowly turned pages of a book that should be savored.

There are those who know the certain type of hurt you can’t run from. You can’t rush lessons demanding understanding. Some wounds are deep beneath the surface. They stain and mark a soul, carving their name into our bones, just to make sure we’ll remember. Meanwhile, the world is unbothered, unaware that you’re bleeding internally. But it hurts to move, to sleep, to breathe, even.

This, we’re meant to sit with.

There are losses so significant we’re permanently altered by it. What once meant everything, will forever mean something. You’ll remember the weight of these days until the very end, a moment of reflection will cause harm to echo through those still hollow parts of your heart. Keep this for yourself. Don’t cheapen any of this by crying on stage. Stitch yourself somewhere privately. Appreciate each tear, make sure they’re all felt until there’s nothing left of it. Don’t bother trying to measure how far you are from the surface, or waste energy figuring out how long it’s going to take.

Learn to love yourself from hell. Find pride at your low points. Embrace your ache like the gift it truly is. This is your moment to see if you’ve got any guts. Find out what you’re really made of. Lock your windows and doors. Barricade yourself in and keep everyone else out.

You may not understand it yet, you may not even believe what I’m about to say, but, this season will mean everything someday. It’ll be exactly what you need. You’re going to feel so alone that you’ll make event the emptiest spaces of yourself into a home. It’s going to be so quiet some nights it’s going to crush whatever’s left of you. If you can stop yourself from running, and ignore the lure of embracing arms that will only leave you feeling empty, and just sink into silence, you’ll soon hear a voice which you won’t recognize.

Some say the voice exists in your head, others say that it’s hard to hear because it lives deep in your heart. Maybe it’s your spirit, or our ancestors, or a ghost, who knows, but what I do know is that at some point you will hear a voice and it will sing life back into you.

By giving yourself space to bleed and pour out all of your sorrow, for as many months or years as heartbreak requires, you’re going to reemerge as a different person. Someone more courageous, more aware, emboldened in ways that make you unrecognizable to some. There’s a resolve to you now that wasn’t there before. You’re tender, in the ways you decided you would always be. And hardened in ways necessary for you to survive. As you’re reintroducing yourself to a world you now know, for certain, you can live without, you’ll notice a shift, things now feel distant, further from your heart and it’s somehow become more difficult to connect with anything and anyone superficially. Small talk will be torturous. Shallow friendships and acquaintances will be forgotten without remorse. In a very real way, you’re more alive for having died. You suffered to survive and though you will wear these recent scars forever, what you found while crawling out of a horrific season, were that many of the things you’ve needed from others existed in you all along. They’re yours now. You earned them. But there are parts of you which could only be discovered while in the depths of despair. And these are things nobody could’ve given you.

Your reward for all that you’ve endured is, in essence, you. More resilient, sure, but also, more alone. The circle shrinks as your self respect increases. You realize the price of accepting various forms of abuse has been paid with parts of your soul that you’re never getting back. Some of you, they stole. And some of you, handed over carelessly to those who were never deserving. What remains are the pieces too rare, too valuable, to share with anyone who doesn’t understand what you’re worth.

J. Raymond