"Our bodies heal without permission, but our hearts need consent. Give it." Lauren Eden

Two days after Girl X decided it was over between us, I thought I was done with everything, with her, just as she was with me. I didn't ring her up, didn't bother to respond to the text she had sent to me, explaining her reasons for leaving. Instead, I surprised myself by how swiftly I slipped into my daily routines. 

I told myself I was done. That I had moved on, and was ready to begin on a clean canvas. Yet, for days and nights and in between working hours, I kept scrolling through her Facebook page, searching for newness. I squinted at her latest posts, scrunching my nose at the tenderness her visage had taken, the smile that travelled deep into her eyes. I was disappointed at her, at the pace in which she was learning to be happy, outside of me. 

Sometimes, our bodies tend to heal faster than our mind. We claim we've moved on, and have found a reprieve from our pain, but our mind remains tethered to the past, in a way that makes it difficult to forget.

This is not a one-way rule to healing, and I am no expert in describing which must learn to move on: the body or the mind. But one thing is certain, complete healing comes only when you reconcile yourself to your pain rather than try to stifle it or ignore its voice. 

When my pain came, I sat with it, listened to it, cried as it poked at my pride and left me vulnerable. In that sheath of grief, I realized many things but most importantly I found being whole again, and that's living without the mindset of the broken. Because sometimes pain has a way of making you play the victim card, and think you solely need to be consoled, I studied the events that led to the separation between my ex and I, noting the moments when I began to ignore her calls and messages, and calling her days after to apologize. I recalled the times when I gave my writing more time than I accorded to her, and with all these things in consideration, I decided that she wasn't totally at fault. She was right; I wasn't ready to settle down. Perhaps, I wouldn't, even in the next five years. Perhaps, I had been too fixated on succeeding as a writer that the mention of failure made me shiver. 

With healing comes forgetting. Still, forgetting is difficult. And healing isn't a one-way street. It is a process that demands a conscious movement of not just the body towards catharsis, but also the mind. Both are forces that must agree for the process to be complete and the individual to be whole again.