By Anonymous
I have become an expert at pretending I am okay. If you scroll through my social media, you’ll see posts about: self-love, healing, letting go of toxic people, and creating boundaries. I know the language of healing so well that people come to me for advice. Friends call me “the strong one.” My followers send me messages about how my words saved them from going back to a bad relationship or helped them finally choose themselves. On the outside, I look like I’ve figured out the formula for wholeness.
But the truth is, I’m still broken.
The words I share are things I want to believe, not things I’ve mastered. I post affirmations that I read in the morning, hoping they will stick to me like glue and cover the cracks inside me. Sometimes they do for a while. Other times, I close the app and feel the weight of my own loneliness pressing against my chest.
I talk about cutting off toxic people, but I still answer calls from someone who hurt me. I write about boundaries, yet I let people cross mine because I’m scared of being abandoned. I remind others that time heals all wounds, but some nights I still cry myself to sleep over wounds that time has only made deeper.
The hardest part is how easily people believe the mask. Healing has become a performance I don’t know how to step away from. I say I’m moving forward, but I’m stuck replaying old conversations, imagining different outcomes, wondering why I wasn’t enough for certain people to stay.
Sometimes I think I push the message of healing because I want so badly to believe that I can eventually arrive there. If I keep talking about it, maybe I will finally grow into the person I pretend to be.
But here is what my audience doesn’t see.
They don’t see the mornings I struggle to get out of bed. They don’t see the way I scroll through my phone, hoping for a message from someone who left me. They don’t know how small triggers undo me like a song, a place, or even a scent that drags me back into memories I don’t want to feel again.
I have written about forgiveness, but I carry grudges in my chest like heavy stones. I’ve told people to “let it go,” yet I clutch onto the past with both hands, as if holding it tightly will finally give me the closure I never received.
It feels like I’m living two lives. In one, I am the guide, the healer, the friend with wisdom. In the other, I am the wounded child who is still begging for love, still scared of being left behind, still trying to piece myself together with broken glass.
And maybe that’s why I am confessing this here, anonymously. Because I don’t want to lie anymore. I don’t want to keep up an image of being healed when I’m still learning how to breathe through my pain.
Healing, I am realizing, isn’t a destination. It isn’t a badge you earn or a certificate you hang on the wall. Healing is messy. It’s two steps forward and three steps back. It’s celebrating progress on Monday and feeling shattered again by Wednesday.
It’s being proud of how far you’ve come but still mourning what you lost.
I think the real lie I’ve told myself and others is that healing means never hurting again. That’s not true. Healing is still hurting, but in a way that slowly teaches you how to carry the weight differently.
I am broken, yes. But maybe broken doesn’t mean useless. Maybe broken means open. Maybe broken means I can still be soft, still be honest, still be real.
So here is my truth: I don’t have it all together. I am not fully healed. I am still in the middle of my story. And I want to believe that’s okay.
Because maybe people don’t need another perfect example of healing. Maybe they need to know that it’s okay to not be okay, that it’s okay to be working on yourself while still stumbling, that it’s okay to speak about healing while still holding your scars.
So if you ever read my words and thought I had it all figured out, please know I don’t. I’m still learning. I’m still trying. I’m still broken. But I’m here. And maybe, just maybe, that’s what healing really looks like.
