Healing (A Personal Narrative)

Photo  taken from my room in Kef, Tunisia.

I woke up this morning naked under my white crumpled sheets. The wide-open window, which then seemed unusually enormous, exposed the large grey-blue sky. I fetched a cigarette and started smoking on an empty-stomach, contemplating my image on the window’s glass reflexion, and thinking aimlessly about my past. I felt the emptiness inside of me, the lack of joy, the depths of my pain, and I dwelt in the abyss of my idle thoughts. The sky, sometimes too wide, sometimes too small, enthralled me that I hardly smoked at all. The memories rushed back and so did my chagrins. I felt helpless, powerless, and utterly alone. I thought of all the perished friendships, and all the long gone lovers, of the ephemeral pleasures and the agonizing heartbreaks. I thought of all the people I have loved, and how most of the time they didn’t deserve it. I thought of how easily I’ve loved, how easily I’ve trusted, and how easily things can change. I thought of the times I’ve been truly hurt and if I’ve been the victim of other people’s cruelty or the victim of my own making. Then I asked myself: “Who am I?”

Every time we face an immense loss, we feel a dire affliction, a regression of ourselves and our identity, a pain that seems eternal, and a “small death” – after all, every form of loss carries with it a certain type of “small deaths”. I decided not to deny myself all these intense feelings and I let them rush in. I let myself feel all the pain there is to feel, with the hope that once drowned in my excruciating pain my spirit would surrender to an everlasting inner and spiritual peace. I was hurt, sad, angry, regretful, and most of all, heartbroken. I let it all in, with open arms and a broken heart. I found out that we don’t always reach closure, and that’s okay. I also found out that it is wrong to reason with sadness. It is right to feel it and then simply heal.

When I looked for the meaning of the word healing in a dictionary, in a hope of better understanding this concept, I noticed that the word "process" is always present in almost all definitions. I understood that spiritual healing is a never ending process, you lift yourself up and you fall down, you heal wounds and further injure others, you grow and you shrink. It seems that healing is not about either extreme, healing is about finding that middle ground between the extremes. This is obviously a simplistic and a spiritually oriented understanding of the meaning of healing. I believe that the concept of healing itself escapes, as it should, any form of precise definition and seems meaningless when put into words. Healing is to be experienced and not explained.

My journey with spiritual healing has taken several forms over the years. Recently, a heart break pushed me into facing my demons once again. In such a defenceless position, I saw my spiritual and emotional capacities recede and in many ways I did hit rock bottom. I realized I had to do something about this. It takes courage to move on, to forget and continue living as if nothing has happened; but I have never been courageous. I realized that it is important to let go of love, when love is already gone. It is important to let go of the past, when the future is calling. It is also important to smile, even when you can’t. It is essential to realize that when someone you loved leaves you, regardless of the reasons and regardless of how sincere your emotions were, you have to let go of them.

Hegel defines the concept of being as the “indeterminate immediate,” and it is towards this immediate that my focus should shift. Spiritual or healing practices can only truly function if applied in a continuous immediate. Healing is also personal, and it is important to work it out silently and without troubling the loved ones around you, for if healing ends up hurting other people then it is not healing at all. When someone you love leaves, either in death or in life, you stop believing... in life itself, in yourself, and in love. But once healed, you start believing again. I do believe now... I believe in myself... I believe that someday very soon everything will be alright.

After having felt everything there is to feel, I decided it’s time to move on and start afresh. I took a deep breath, and I went out of bed.