The Art of Healing

What is healing? What is growth?

Healing can be an impossible process. Well, for me at least. Healing requires acknowledging a problem. To heal is to look inward. To ask yourself: What’s working? Or, more importantly, what’s not? Healing requires a level of self-assurance, a level of which I struggle to grapple with sometimes. Nobody else can do the work for you. People can help, but only once you do some work yourself. You have to rely on yourself to let go of your hurting. You have to rely on yourself to heal. You’re on your own for the process. A necessary process, though. Healing is the catalyst for growth. To heal starts with knowing what you want out of it. So… what do I want?

If some magical being were to come to me and say I could go back in time 10 years - do anything different or relive the exact same choices, just relive my teenage years and early 20s completely unchanged - I can safely say I would not do that. For so many reasons. The idea does not appeal to me. If I went back, knowing what I know now, none of the choices I would make would be the same. I know that. I have regrets. My life would look completely different. I’d be a different person. I could have fixed some things, steered clear of situations that would become my current trauma, however I believe I am in the place I am meant to be now. Entering my 24th year. I wouldn’t want to risk losing the growth I’ve managed, even if my alternate path could be better. That wasn’t the path I was meant to be on.

I am officially… undeniably… entering my mid-20s today. I am turning 24. It’s getting serious. The current era of my life has come with an excess of hard change. A lot of stress, forceful but necessary growing up. I know I’ve been an adult for over half a decade, I’m not trying to claim myself as a 24-year-old-teenager. I just mean, your personal evolution doesn’t stop the second you turn 18 or 21. There’s so much growth as you age, and for the rest of your life. Although I obviously always knew that you don’t just stop learning when you become an adult… but I used to think I’d know so much more by the time I turned 24. What I’m learning is that there’s a shift at a certain point of adulthood. The next step. Where things just… happen. At once. You realize the reality of your position in the world, and you adjust to brace for impact. Like, your frontal lobe may not be developed, but you’re closer to it. It’s the Uptown Girls, “I don’t see any grown-ups around here,” “I do,” of it all. I know, I really managed to tie this into Uptown Girls. Not as a throughline of this issue, but I do find it to be one of the best Coming-of-Age-in-your-20s films.

My last week of being 23 was rough. Not even the impending sense of aging, though perhaps that didn’t help. Every day it felt as though some force was working against me. Something new and heavy was thrown at me from every turn, every day. To the point where, if I were the younger version of myself, I would’ve collapsed. I would’ve broken down. I start to expect curveballs headed my way, because… of course they will. Nothing can be at peace for too long. Such is life. Life won’t just pause for you when you feel uncomfortable. The only way out is through, and the only way through is to enforce your own necessary change. Change of scenery, change of circumstance, change of life. Everything I’ve learned before has prepared me to deal with these bad cards. I'm not thankful for my trauma, I wish every day that I could’ve lived an easier life. I’m not healed, but I’m patched up. I can deal with obstacles better than I could have dealt with anything before. Though, perhaps my Quarter-Life Crisis is just brewing and I’m actively trying to convince myself I’m handling it well.

Two years ago, I started the not j*ss newsletter. If you’re reading this, you might have heard of it. I still don’t accept paid subscribers. I would just feel… bad. Like, why are you paying for a person whose talent is Twitter User? Writing is what I want to do as a career, to be sure. Though, instead of managing this as a “job,” I treat this as my passion project of sorts. Throughout this project, I’ve set goals for myself. To see how far I can grow this. Trying to hit a certain number of clicks or subscriber, it adds more of a tangible finish line that keeps me motivated to keep up with a consistent release schedule. Do I actually follow through on or check back on what I’ve vowed to myself? Not always but this is an investment in myself. Investing in myself has never led me astray. Even if an issue doesn’t receive a certain number of clicks, even if I don’t hit my goal subscriber count by a self-set deadline, I’ve still grown with this. My writing style has grown drastically, hopefully for the best. By following through. By being consistent, by just… trying my best. I’ve become the writer I am today, hopefully becoming better and better at what I’m doing. It’s been a project worthy of my personal investment. 

So, I go back to my initial question, what do I want? I wish that was an easy question. I have superficial goals. I want to travel. I want to be able to afford existing while also being able to afford giving myself things I enjoy. I want to write. But what do I actually want? What will heal my inner self? I don’t have an answer. I just want to be a little better than I’ve been before: Mentally, at what I put my effort into, to my friends. Really, just in my day-to-day life.

This was a shorter issue, I think. Okay. Hope you all are doing well. We got this! Stream Cowboy Carter!