fast

by Millie Belizaire

Somebody somewhere once said, ‘Time heals all wounds.’ My only question to that has always been… how much time? I have a different theory. You see, I think time makes you forget the things that never mattered. However, when things are serious—traumatic, maybe—time has a way of painting unforgettable images into your memory. Trauma is like cement; time only makes it more solid.

Sometimes you can fool yourself into thinking you’re “over” something. Then you catch yourself saying things, doing things, avoiding things, realizing you never truly got over anything. You just set new boundaries so that the same thing couldn’t happen to you twice. Time doesn’t heal most wounds. If you’re lucky, time distracts you long enough so that you can forget.

In life, there are certain things that you just need. I needed food to eat. I needed air to breathe. I needed water to drink. And I needed Caprice.

That’s because you can give a victim every resource in the world, but that final push towards healing and self-acceptance… It comes from within.

“Yeah,” he believed me, “I know you will.” He looked at me with tears pooling at the rims of his eyes. “I just… I just wish I’d known you sooner.”

Age allowed me to understand that pain is unavoidable, and you’d live a very meaningless life trying to avoid it.