There’s a difference between pain nurtured, softened by gentle hands and time ice cold, hardened by vast, hollow space.

Time is not a crutch, it is not a safety blanket that will heal your demons. The hands of time aren’t kind or gentle because it doesn’t have a soft spot to rest your head on, it doesn’t comfort you when all you need is someone to let you cry and patiently hold your hand until you feel safe. They say time heals all wounds, and we ask, sometimes even mindlessly, how we can ease someone's pain, our answer is usually “only time can do that.”

How little we understand the human condition to think some vast space holds magical powers to heal us. If someone stuck their hands in a bucket of ice, would you let them put their hands on you? Because that’s essentially what you’re doing if you carry the ridiculous notion that your pain will heal with time. Soulful, heartfelt, loving energy is what has the power.

We lie to ourselves, claiming to leave what has hurt us in the past where it belongs, but truth is, it’s never gone. Most days the elusive darkness follows me everywhere, like a ghostly presence looming over my bed as I try to sleep. Who are we to say where the past belongs? The past is defined as “gone by in time and no longer existing”, therefore, this tells us that technically we can’t leave our memories in a nonexistent space.

If we believe everything that’s defined for us, then we’re slowly killing ourselves. Telling ourselves to get over whatever that ails us, convincing ourselves to push those turbulent emotions aside and be done, is a means of self-abuse. It translates to the very fiber of our being that we do not matter, that those hurts growing over old wounds, are absolutely nothing.

If the past no longer exists, then why are ghosts living in the void? Ghosts that kill you and others around you.

Time only tricks our minds into forgetting what’s heavy. If seconds traveling through space evaporates the pain into something that still lingers, then is it really called healing? Where does unresolved pain go if it hasn’t been absorbed by the soul it resides in? It must settle somewhere that we can’t see, lodged in the in-between that doesn’t allow for anything unpleasant to grow beyond its confines.