I promise you will heal if you let yourself feel.
In December of 2019, I went on a cruise with my best friend.
We escaped the New Jersey cold to enjoy five days of sun, unlimited drinks, delicious steak, sushi and pasta, the beach, the pool, and even some karaoke…how could it get any better?
Well, with a vacation fling of course.
On our second night, Katie and I decided to check out the ship’s lounge/nightclub. I was heading to my room and ready to call it quits. Then “Zack” (we’ll protect the not so innocent) bumped into me. He complimented my glasses, we started talking, which then led to dancing, and the rest of the week was history.
We stayed up all night the first night we met - I often compare it to the scene in Crazy, Stupid, Love where Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone’s characters are ABOUT to sleep with each other, but ultimately don’t because they spend the whole night laughing and joking around. As we watched our ship approach Labadee during sunrise, all he kept saying was “I need to make sure I see you again.”
Well, spoiler alert - he did. Every single night. For four nights I had spent hours upon hours with this boy. We wandered the ship, got drinks, scrounged for pizza when it was well past dining hours, and sit and chat on the windy deck at 2 am. It felt surreal, like something that would only happen in a movie. But at the same time, it felt right. We had quite a bit in common - from music taste and hobbies to high school sports. His best friend even went to the same college as me. And out of the hundreds of people I could have met on this cruise, Zack was also from New Jersey and only lived about 20 minutes from me. I won’t bore you with the details, but you get the point. We hardly slept, saw the sun come up almost every night and although I spent the whole week trying to not catch feels, I was partially swooning.
When we returned to our respective towns, things went south.
He was still trying to maintain contact and hang out which at first I was all for - until I found out he had a long-term girlfriend, a detail conveniently left out of the entire week. A follow on Instagram and finding the guts to ask was all it took. The night I found out about his relationship I was out for dinner with my parents and could hardly focus on the conversation at all.
When I got home that night, all I could do was cry. I felt guilty. I was angry, sad, and shocked. But I tried to distract myself and not let it bother me. I kept telling myself that I don’t have a right to feel this way and there was no point in being sad because it was never real to begin with. So after that night, I tried my best to forget the experience ever happened.
A few days later my friend called to see how I was doing. As you probably guessed, I wasn’t feeling my best. For those who don’t know me, it could sound like I’m being dramatic. But my friends (especially my best friend who was on the cruise with me) knew this was really the cherry on top of a long string of bad luck when it had come to boys. She witnessed my interactions with Zack firsthand, and even she felt fooled.
So sitting in my car, trying to wipe my tears before heading into the gym, I told her how stupid I felt. I told her there isn’t even a point in being upset because there was never really a chance. He was never “mine.” He wasn’t who I thought he was anyway, so why was I wasting my breath? I was just tired. Over the summer I had a similar experience, so this theme of dishonesty felt all too constant. I didn’t want to care. So I acted as if I didn’t. To which she said, “Just because of how it turned out doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to be upset about it.” I realized that regardless of the outcome, my experience was real and my feelings were valid. I didn’t imagine four days of what felt like a rom-com, it was truly what happened.
And it finally clicked for me.
I could only move forward and heal from the situation if I was brutally honest with myself. I would only be able to get over this if I sat in my misery.
So I went to the gym, lifted, and used the spin bike until I was exhausted, and on the drive home I blasted music and cried. And that for sure wasn’t the last time I took a drive like that. But there was a difference between this cry and the one from the night I found out. I accepted it.
The more that I passed judgment on my feelings and tried to suppress them, the worse I felt. By completely minimizing the situation, I wasn’t allowing myself to grieve. I saw a post on Instagram a few weeks after this epiphany and I saved it immediately.
It said: “Unpopular opinion: There is still grief involved in letting a toxic person go.”
Out of all the difficult relationship and boy situations I’ve been in, this was easily the most toxic, and all I wanted to do was be angry and move on. But there is grief in heartbreak. There is grief in learning that someone isn’t who you thought they were. So of course, there is sadness. I needed to accept that.
I want to remind anyone reading or listening to this right now that no matter what your situation is right now, whether you’re experiencing grief, anger, pain, sadness, frustration, disappointment, or all of them together - remember that all of those feelings are hard enough to feel on their own. And when you judge yourself for feeling that way, you’re only compounding those intense negative feelings.
I found myself reflecting on this situation during one of my quarantine walks a few months later. When I realized how terrible I was making myself feel, on top of already feeling devasted, I said to myself:
I promise you will heal if you let yourself feel.
Think about it like scraping your knee on the pavement.
If you scrape it bad enough, you can’t just put a band-aid on it and hope for the best. You have to go in and clean it and disinfect it. And that process usually stings! But once you get all the gunk out and deal with the initial problem, it’s easier for your body to rebuild and heal. You might have a scar (and I have many scars on my knee for the record), but in time you can return to a pretty healthy-looking and functioning knee.
However, if you skip that disinfecting step, you’re only making matters worse. If you ignore the problem, or just throw the band-aid on without true care, it doesn’t heal properly. It starts to look funky. You could get an infection. Maybe a few weeks or even months go by and everything seems fine but then that day you fall again or it reopens, it throbs. Now it’s even worse than before.
The same happens with your feelings. When you’re in difficult situations or handling emotions that are difficult to navigate and try to repress, you risk a tougher “recovery.”
if you don’t go in and “sting” a little bit and don’t allow yourself to really feel your feelings and clean the wound, the problems and pain could sneak back in at any time and feel worse than before.
If you don’t clean off your “infected knee” you might it might flare up again. You go for a run and it starts to hurts. You’re trying to move on but the pain is still lingering. But had you cleaned it, dealt with the sting, the scar might bother you, but it won’t hinder you forever.
When it came to Zack, for a good week I tried to just completely disregard my feelings. To push how I felt down because it didn’t feel like I had any right to feel hurt. To minimize my sadness because what was the point? It didn’t matter that I didn’t have him because who I thought he was, wasn’t even true. And that made the situation ten times worse. It wasn’t until I just let myself be in my feelings that my healing truly began.
When you allow yourself to sit in your pain, and allow yourself to feel it, as difficult as it is, over time it gets much easier to tackle vs you suppressing it. When you make the distinction that you are a human WITH feelings and NOT your feelings, day by day it gets easier. I’m not saying you’ll ever have a perfect “knee” or heart or trust barrier, but you will be so much further along than had you put the tiny bandaid on and ignore it.
Thankfully (yes, thankfully), I had experienced heartbreak before, so I knew it was temporary. That kept me from going insane! I even remember there was one week I was waking up at 3 am, experiencing this immense heaviness and wave of sadness, and writing a note to myself saying “I can’t wait to not feel this way anymore.” Guilt, disappointment, extreme sadness. It took quite some time to not feel that way anymore. It took about two months. And even now and then I think about that situation and feel a little sad or a little funny. I also had to make some decisions during that time like not really drinking or partaking in any sort of activity that would amplify those feelings. Maybe I was uncomfortable, but I didn’t ignore it. And I stopped judging myself for my negative feelings.
You can’t keep everything bottled up forever. And when you’re experiencing tough emotions, your judgment against yourself for feeling that way only makes it ten times worse. This is why I even get a little iffy over the term “bad mental health day.” Feeling anxious, angry, or sad doesn’t mean your mental health is “bad” - it means you're a human being with experiences and emotions. Your feelings are your feelings, and difficult feelings don’t need difficult judgment. How can you cope with anger, disappointment, or pain if all you do is try to hide it?
And I’d like to make a point and say, of course, some feelings are tougher to navigate than others. You can’t always be alone. If you are afraid or hesitant to feel your feelings alone, please don’t be afraid to reach out for help. To call or text a friend. To turn to a hotline. To even watch a YouTube video or Google a forum.; to ask for someone even to just sit there with you, provide support and company even without advice and direction. My situation and my past experiences made me prefer to handle it for the most part alone in my room, but that’s not always the case. Isolation is hardly the answer. I’m not a licensed professional and cannot talk as if I am one, this is simply my experience. Everyone is different. But we all deserve the same open space to be in our feelings without judgment.
The biggest thing when it comes to your feelings and your mental health, the situations you go through, is to not judge yourself for having them and you allow yourself to have them. To even take the time to understand why you’re feeling the way that you are (and that can be a discussion for another day).
And of course, I’m not saying you should feel your feelings at the expense of anyone else. I’m not saying to be angry and go hit someone in the face or act out toward someone or say something you don’t mean. Figure out your ways to cope in a healthy way and allow yourself to be mad, frustrated, or upset because it’s not forever. It’s scary, and it’s tiring, but in time it gets better. If you’re struggling right now, anything at all, this is your reminder that it’s okay to feel however it is you’re feeling right now. And it won’t be forever. By allowing yourself to grieve, you’re opening the door to healing. And you will come back stronger.
