How I started healing

Listening to Take Your Time by Pete Rock, there is no better moment to touch on this subject. I’m talking about healing with time.

A year ago, I was going down: a burnout was right around the corner. A burnout that made four years of repressed depression come out like a fury. I spent two months struggling to just exist. I was back on anti-depressants but didn’t feel much better. I kept on hiding it and repressing my despair with alcohol and weed. So, I was burnt out, depressed and an addict. Then came the violent images. Those thoughts that weren’t mine. Thoughts I am not comfortable sharing with the masses. They were violent and shocking. I didn’t know what to do with them and wasn’t able to talk about them. So, I turned to self-harm. That’s when I knew I was going down, down. But I kept on moving like everything was normal. Until one night I broke down in front of my friends (yes, I was absolutely drunk). That’s when I finally decided to go to the hospital. But things only got worse.

I got to my lowest in late February-early March when I tried to kill myself multiple times. I was desperate from then on and only wanted to get out of the hospital to say goodbye and leave for good. But I was stuck there because I was in involuntary… They kept me for a long time, even though I tried to act like everything was fine so they’d let me out. But suddenly things started to turn around. It was early May when I felt a weight being taken off my shoulders. I had no idea why I was feeling better, I wasn’t doing anything different. Then one day I understood. Nobody saved me. Not my loved-ones, not the hospital, not even me. Time saved me. All I needed was time to think and accept that I am not okay hence helping me leave it behind.

That’s where Take Your Time comes back up. There is no miracle treatment or therapy: you just need to take time for yourself. May it be in a hospital for safety reasons like me or somewhere secluded or in another country. Whatever is best for you. Knowing time will make things better doesn’t mean you’ll be healed. I still get my lows; I still take a bunch of medication and I still turn back to my destructive habits from time to time. Knowing that it takes time to heal isn’t enough; you have to accept it. Truly accept it. That means being okay with not being okay, with letting go of the negative things you are now used to and with moving on. A lot of people are stuck in a vicious cycle because they don’t want to let go of the person they have become, even if it is negative. You need to want to move on and trust the process. You need to take your time.

Listen to the song: