Does Time Heal?

After love ends, we say lots of things to make it feel better.

We talk about time and how it heals. We say we will, we are getting over it.

I was contemplating this morning, as I was waking up, what you can say to someone when they are struggling to forget a love that's not in their lives any more. There must be a way (without lying) to numb the pain, to help them to focus on the light at the end of the tunnel rather than how long the tunnel is...

I had a funny little vision of my last partner, standing at the end of a long corridor, looking at me. He was so far away, he looked very small. We waved at each other and smiled, and then he turned and walked through a door and was gone.

I still feel sometimes that I could follow him through the door. There, on the other side, would be our relationship, just as I want it to be: all that parts I miss, all still there like nothing had happenned. I could walk through and I'd be back in it again.

But I don't do it.

Because that door opens up to a dream of the relationship, not the reality of it. So instead I have to watch him walk through it alone, and then I have to turn away and come back to my own life.

It's not so hard to do. My real life is more important, fun, exciting... real than my daydreams.

And that's how it is, to begin with. Love is lost, and life continues no matter what is going on inside your head. You just have to get on with it. But later on, what if you're still being haunted by the ghosts... what if it feels like you will never find a way to escape them? What can you do then to make it feel better?

For my part, this is what I think: right now, at this moment in time (this is not to say that somewhere down the line I won't change my point of view entirely- none of my opinions are fixed, I am always open to debate and ready to be proven wrong!)...

Time doesn't heal, time just covers everything with dust. I don't think that once you've truly loved someone, it will ever just stop. I have become very aware that good things in your past are not made bad by bad things. In other words- if you have very good, very beautiful, very happy memories of life with a person, nothing can ever take those memories away. Even if, on other occasions, they treated you like absolute shit. Even if the rest of the time you were miserable. Those bad times don't have an effect on the good times, they are two separate things. You can use the bad times as a (perfectly reasonable) justification for not trying to re-live the good times. But you can't use them to paint over or blot out the good memories.

So you just have to find the strength inside you to keep that door to the good memories closed, and wait for the dust of time to become so thick, you hardly notice what's underneath it. But don't hovver there with your foot wedged in the door, because that's just torture. Turn your back on it and go look for new things to do, new people to have fun with and be excited by. The more good memories you can find to put into your head, the deeper the old ones will be buried under the dust.

I'd be interested to hear others opinions on this one so please comment if you feel inspired!