People often ask what healing looks like.
I don’t think it looks like standing in the light without fear.
At least, not at first.
If you have lived in darkness for a very long time, your eyes learn its language.
The darkness is where every possible danger lives. Where expecting disappointment feels wiser than hoping. Where dreaming a new dream almost feels dishonest.
You know every corner of it. You know where to step, where to hide, where danger usually comes from.
Darkness stops feeling like darkness. It simply becomes home.
So when healing begins, it doesn’t feel like someone opening a door to sunshine.
It feels like someone asking you to leave the only home you’ve ever known.
If you’ve lived on one side long enough, you’ll recognize the strange feeling when you begin moving toward the other. Something inside you knows that the world is changing before your mind can explain it.
People call it healing.
I’d call it a tunnel.
At first, the journey feels like walking through a tunnel where you cannot see the end.
Behind you is the darkness you know.
You have started to believe you know it so much that you can win in it. You have struggled with it so much you think you can overpower it. You think you know all the dirty tricks of the dark world, you know you can outsmart it.
You think if you’re careful enough, vigilant enough, prepared enough, you’ll finally outrun it.
But darkness has a way of convincing you that surviving is the same as living.
And now ahead of you is a light you’ve only heard stories about. You feel you’ve been there before, but so long ago that your body remembers it more than your mind does.
The darkness is painful.
But it is familiar.
The light is beautiful.
But it is unknown.
And the unknown has always frightened a nervous system that survived by predicting every danger.
So you walk.
Sometimes you crawl.
Sometimes you simply sit down in the middle of the tunnel, wondering if you should go back.
You want to run toward the light everyone keeps talking about.
But the moment you try, it feels as though someone has cut your legs from beneath you.
The body refuses.
Not because it wants darkness.
Because it has only ever known darkness.
As you continue, you begin hearing voices.
Sometimes they comfort you.
Sometimes they frighten you.
Sometimes they sound like fellow travelers somewhere deeper inside the tunnel. You want to call out to them, but uncertainty keeps you silent.
Every unfamiliar sound feels like another possible danger.
Then there are days when the light seems closer.
You become hopeful.
“This is it,” you tell yourself.
Until you round another bend and discover the tunnel stretches far beyond what you imagined.
You feel defeated.
Maybe you’ll never reach the end.
Maybe everyone else found a shortcut.
Maybe you’re simply not made for the light.
So you stop hoping for a while.
You decide you’ll live here instead, somewhere between darkness and daylight, belonging fully to neither.
And strangely…that becomes enough.
Until one morning something shifts.
You don’t know why.
Nothing dramatic happened.
Yet suddenly it feels as though the ground beneath you has become a slope.
You aren’t dragging yourself anymore.
You’re moving.
Effortlessly.
You cover distances that once seemed impossible.
You cover more ground in a week than you thought possible in a year.
You wonder if you’ve finally arrived.
Then the slope levels out. The speed disappears.
But something else remains.
Trust.
You understand now that some days you’ll learn.
Some days you’ll simply walk. Some days you’ll rest.
And resting no longer feels like losing progress.
Nothing you’ve learned disappears because you paused.
Along the way, you meet people who seem as though they belong to the light already.
You wonder why they’re still inside the tunnel.
You want to tell them they’re walking the wrong way.
You want to tell them how terrifying the darkness can become.
You want to warn them not to chase it.
But then you realize something unexpected.
To them…
you look like someone who has always belonged to the light.
They cannot see where you came from.
They cannot imagine the darkness you survived.
They cannot see the darkness you carry with you.
Some believe your story.
Some dismiss it.
Some look at you with confusion.
And slowly you understand that convincing people was never your journey.
Walking was.
Then one day you notice something you hadn’t noticed before.
The tunnel hasn’t ended.
Perhaps it never will.
But there is more light here now than darkness.
Enough light to recognize your own face.
Enough light to stop mistaking every shadow for danger.
Enough light to breathe.
The tunnel no longer feels like a prison.
It feels like a bridge.
It still sways sometimes.
You still hold its ropes tightly, afraid of slipping back into old abysses.
But now, when you look ahead, you can see people laughing in the light.
And instead of wondering whether you’ll ever belong there…
you simply keep walking.
Because somewhere along the way, healing stopped being about reaching the end.
It became about no longer fearing the journey.
And then you realize something else.
The tunnel didn’t change.
You did.
You no longer mistake every step forward for a reason to turn back.
Healing was never about escaping the darkness.
It was about becoming someone who could keep walking toward the light without needing to know exactly when they’d arrive.