Crow and Flame

I was sitting in therapy awhile ago, reflecting on the fact that in the last year, I think I’ve cried more than I ever have in my entire life.

And that realization startled me.

Because for most of my life, I didn’t cry.

I’d get hurt and show no emotion.

Someone would say something cruel, and I’d stare back blank-faced, unaffected on the surface.

I witnessed tragedies.
Endured trauma.
Carried secondary trauma that never even belonged to me in the first place.

And I handled it all like a machine.

Or at least that’s what I told myself.

I thought surviving without visible emotion meant I was strong.
I thought being unshaken meant I was healed.
I thought silence was resilience.

But my therapist asked me something that cracked that illusion wide open.

“Did you actually handle it… or did you just file it away?”

And honestly?

That question haunted me.

Because she was right.

I didn’t process those experiences.
I archived them.

Locked them in dark little compartments somewhere deep inside myself and kept moving as if they weren’t still alive under the surface.

But pain does not disappear just because you refuse to look at it.

It seeps.

It poisons the foundation quietly while you’re busy pretending the structure is still standing.

And eventually your body remembers what your mind tried to bury.

The shaking.
The exhaustion.
The numbness.
The disconnect.
The inability to feel joy fully.
Love fully.
Peace fully.

Because when you cut yourself off from grief, you rarely only lose grief.

You lose access to everything else too.

I spent years believing I was emotionally controlled when in reality I was emotionally absent.

You are meant to feel things.

You are meant to cry when your heart breaks.
You are meant to feel anger when someone wounds you.
You are meant to grieve what harmed you.
You are meant to ache.

That isn’t weakness.
That is being alive.

And maybe healing isn’t becoming untouchable.

Maybe healing is finally allowing yourself to be touched by your own humanity again.