I wrote recently about acceptance.
At the time, I believed I was beginning to understand what it meant. Maybe I still am. But if I'm being truthful, acceptance is not something I wake up with every morning.
Some days it feels close enough to touch. Other days, it feels like a distant shore I can see but haven't reached. I still think about what happened. I still find myself replaying conversations, revisiting moments, wondering if there was something I missed.
Some part of me still searches for an explanation, as though the right answer might suddenly make everything easier to carry. It never does.
Or at least, it hasn't yet. What surprises me most is how inconsistent healing can be. One day I feel steady. The next, a memory catches me off guard and suddenly I'm back in a place I thought I had left behind. Not completely, but enough to remind me that wounds don't disappear simply because we decide they should.
I used to see these moments as setbacks. Now I'm not so sure. Maybe healing isn't a straight path. Maybe it's a conversation between who we were and who we're becoming. Some days one voice is louder than the other. The truth is, I haven't moved on. Not entirely.
There are still things I miss. Still things I wish had happened differently. Still questions that remain unanswered. But I am no longer fighting myself for feeling that way. That might not sound like progress, but I think it is. Because there was a time when I believed I needed to be "over it" by now.
A time when every lingering thought felt like failure. Now, when the memories return, I try not to judge them. I let them sit beside me for a while before they eventually leave again. Perhaps acceptance is not the absence of longing.
Perhaps it is learning to live alongside it. I don't know how this story ends. I don't know when these thoughts will finally lose their weight. But for now, I am still here. Still writing. Still trying to understand myself a little better than I did yesterday.
And maybe that is enough for today.