The Evidence of Survival and At What Cost
“What does not kill me makes me stronger.” – Friedrich Nietzsche
A quote so often spoken by people who have gone toe to toe with profound and indescribable pain.
The only way it seems describable is to transmute it into something noble, as if it was always destined.
I used to say things like that, too. But the reality is that healing is not linear, nor is it clean.
It’s messy.
And messy isn’t always an indicator of flaws. Sometimes, it’s evidence.
Now I say things like,
“What does not kill you
Surely
Will make a peice of you wish it did.”
I think healing is often glorified — as if suffering is some sacred rite of passage. As if there’s honor in bleeding, in surviving, in carrying unbearable things and somehow still standing.
To me, healing and suffering go hand in hand in an endless loop. To heal, is to make a conscious choice not to run away. To look at whatever the source of pain is head on.
But a lot of the time, it just feels like punishment.
The shaky hand in the videos I capture while expressing my grief is evidence of a body and nervous system that have seen hell and come back swinging. I’m grateful to still be standing, but at what cost?
Because even though I’ve grown, my nervous system remembers. And it shows up in messy ways.
Grief. Trauma. Survival.
Sometimes those things leave you resentful for having survived at all.
Multiple truths can exist at once.
I would be lying if I said there wasn’t a part of me that wanted to give up. I would be lying if I said there wasn’t a part of me that wanted to jump off a bridge. Not because life is terrible — I love being alive — but because I am exhausted.
I’m tired of having to be strong. Tired of carrying myself through another day. Tired of constantly having to grow from pain I never asked for.
Healing isn’t always triumphant.
Yes, in some ways it makes you stronger. But it also strips away innocence. You do not walk away from grief unchanged. You do not walk away from pain and into acceptance while keeping every piece of who you once were.
Some parts of you survive.
Some parts don’t.
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