Hey, how about some goodness in here?

I had plans for myself weekend, plans involving a soulful getaway, some way of giving myself closure and starting all over in the healing process. Plans got cancelled as I kind of imagined they would. I also imagined the closure and healing would follow suit because I thought I couldn’t heal in the same place I broke.

But there’s something about honesty, god damn it. There’s something about opening up. There’s something about being willing to be with someone and talk it out and share all the dirt you’ve been building up in your closet. Before you know it, it’s clean and you can start over.

You know something? I really have no idea how to write about good things; I do it so rarely. A month into this blog and I was feeling very discouraged because I couldn’t share a shred of positivity. And sure, I meant this place to be honest, and that means when I’m hurting, I’m honest about the hurting.

I just didn’t want that to be my excuse. I didn’t want to look like I was hurting forever because that’s not the message I wanted to give out in the end. I still want this to be a message about getting better.

My best friend and I are chatting as I type. A certain role model in our shared life got married over the weekend, and we are overflowing with secondhand happiness. We’re pretty good with the empathy thing, but this is different. This friend married her soul mate and it’s crazy clear to all of us. Their wedding updates are filled with sweetly personal elements. It talks about their relationship alone, irreproducible by any Pinterest board or fancy magazine. We understand that their love isn’t flawless, but from the very beginning everything felt right. And I know that made it easier to be sure, even on the bad days, that this was where they were meant to be.

We’re crying, because we want to know that we’ll get there someday too. We want our own intimately imperfect place in the world that simultaneously takes us around the world and welcomes us home. We want to get to that place where our hearts can say, “We. F***ing. Made it.” We want to get there. And if there were only one thing I learned this weekend, it has to be how madly healing it can be to know that you can get there.

Hearts don’t break, y’all, they bruise and get better.

It’s like a battle cry I have always heard but never known the words to. It’s like a prayer I recite so convincingly it feels like a promise. It’s the epic I’m trying to write, the line that’s stuck in my lungs, the words that got tangled around my fingers when I took too long rearranging them.

It’s the parable I’m trying to believe in, the one that could have saved me.

What I’m saying is — and please hold my hand while I say this — I have been so haunted by the urge to leave everything behind and start all over in a life where nothing ever hurt, that I didn’t realize innocence isn’t quite as good as healing. Being in a new place isn’t as wonderful as arriving at the place you’ve been trying to get to for so, so long. And my absolute favorite part is how I get to promise people that they’ll get there too. Scratch that, my favorite part is being there when they get there.

When you’ve been there, you’ll understand. There’s no connection quite like getting through some tough shit together.

I’m still healing, loves. I’m still bruising too, from time to time. I don’t think it’s ever going to end, and I know that reaching your safe place doesn’t equal happily ever after. But I think it’s time I got back to doing what I came here to do, and that’s to spin all the hurting into something that heals. To find people who need someone to get through their storms with, and be with them as I get through mine. I’ve got a few words that might help. You’ll see.