I believe talking is one of the best ways to process almost anything.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Sometimes your mind is moving so fast that you cannot even tell what you actually think.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Then you try to explain it to somebody.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
You have to slow down.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
You have to put one thought in front of another.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
You have to find words for something that, five minutes earlier, was just noise inside your head.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
I think there is something powerful in that.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
But I have also learned that talking about pain and processing pain are not always the same thing.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
There were times when talking helped me understand what I was carrying.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
There were other times when talking about it made me angry all over again.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
When injustices were fresh, I could feel myself going right back into them.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The anger.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The sadness.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The disbelief.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Sometimes I even acted angrier than I felt because I wanted other people to keep talking about what happened.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
I did not want it quietly accepted.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
I did not want everybody to move on while I was still standing there thinking, \u201cHow can everyone just let this go?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
I wanted a fight because what happened felt worth fighting over.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Maybe some of it was.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
But eventually you have to ask yourself a different question.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Am I telling this because it needs to be told, or am I living inside it again every time I tell it?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p>\n I think there is a difference.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n I am still learning where that line is.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n I do not know if I can perfectly explain the moment when processing becomes different from spiraling.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n I am not completely at peace with everything.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Maybe I never will be.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n But there are things I have accepted.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n The present.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n The past.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n The trauma.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n The things I can change.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n The things I cannot.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Acceptance is strange because it does not necessarily make something hurt less immediately.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n It just means you stop arguing with the fact that it happened.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n For a long time, I think I was running from myself.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Maybe longer than I understood.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n I had a hard time believing in myself.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n I could not see things in me that other people apparently could.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n And when pain came later, it became even easier to lose sight of who I was underneath all of it.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n That might be one of the most dangerous things about trauma.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Eventually, you can become so focused on what happened to you that you forget there was a person there before it happened.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n And there is still a person there afterward.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n There is something exhausting about constantly defending yourself.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Even just playing defense wears you down.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Sometimes you find yourself in a game you did not even realize you were playing.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n You did not know the rules.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n You did not know who all the players were.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n You did not even know a game existed.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Then suddenly you are expected to respond to things, correct things, explain yourself, defend yourself, and somehow keep track of what everybody else thinks.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n If you are anything like me, eventually you realize something.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n You never wanted to play in the first place.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n So why are you spending your whole life trying to win?<\/p>\n<\/p>\n There was a point where I started realizing that I did not actually care about winning some strange game of perception.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n I wanted out.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n That sounds simple.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n It is not.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Because walking away sometimes means accepting that someone else may keep their version of you.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n They may believe something you wish they did not.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n They may tell a story about you that you would never tell about yourself.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n They may feel like they won.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n And maybe, in their world, they did.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n That is difficult to accept.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n But there comes a point where protecting your peace means being willing to let somebody else be wrong about you.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n You do not have to win every version of yourself that exists inside somebody else’s mind.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p>\n You have to live with the person you actually are.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n There were times when I thought I needed people to understand before I could move forward.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n If they just knew.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n If they saw the whole picture.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n If I explained it clearly enough.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n If the right person finally understood what happened.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Maybe then I could put it down.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n I learned something hard.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n You cannot build your peace that way.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n You cannot make everybody understand.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n You cannot control what somebody is willing to hear.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n You cannot control which version of events somebody chooses to believe.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n You cannot control what another person says after you leave the room.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n I am still struggling with that.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Not because I need everybody to like me.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n It is bigger than that for me.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n I know the good I want to do in the world.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n And when somebody’s perception of you makes that harder, it can be incredibly frustrating.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n There are times when it can feel almost impossible.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n But I also know this:<\/p>\n<\/p>\n I am not going to stop.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n I have to be happy with myself.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n I have to focus on my world.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n The people I love.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n The things I can build.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n The things I can create.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n The good I can actually do instead of spending all of my energy trying to convince somebody that I am capable of doing it.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Right now, writing is my form of talking.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n And it gives me hope.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n I think creative outlets can be incredibly valuable because they give you somewhere to put things that otherwise stay trapped inside you.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n For me, they are almost vital.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n My memo pad on my phone is packed with writing.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Thoughts.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Ideas.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Pieces of things.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Things I needed to say.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Things I may never show anybody.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n When I write something down, it gets it out of my head and puts it in front of me.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n And somehow it does not seem as big anymore.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n That feeling goes back much further than these blogs.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n It actually goes all the way back to elementary school.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n I was in fourth grade when I had a teacher named Ms. Raymond.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n I was the kid who was always getting in trouble.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n That was not exactly a secret.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n But Ms. Raymond made me apply myself to writing.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n I remember writing a report for her.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n When she graded it, she told me it was one of the best reports she had ever read.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Then she did something I have never forgotten.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n She read it out loud to the class.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n She asked everybody to guess who wrote it.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Naturally, people guessed the honor roll students.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n And rightfully so.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n There were kids like Tabitha and Conrad who seemed to live and breathe education.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Of course everybody assumed it was one of them.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Then Ms. Raymond told the class it was me.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Little old, always-in-trouble Josh.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n I still remember that feeling.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n I was proud of myself.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Really proud.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n I felt accomplished.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n And maybe more importantly, someone I felt safe with, someone I looked up to, someone who genuinely looked out for me, was proud of me too.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n She saw something underneath what everybody else saw on the surface.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n I think about that now.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Because maybe she saw something in that kid that I spent a very long time having trouble seeing in myself.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n The acting out was visible.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n The pain underneath it was not always visible.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n I am only now starting to understand some of that.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n And maybe part of what I am doing with these blogs is trying to find that feeling again.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Not applause.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Not attention.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n That feeling of creating something and looking at it afterward and thinking:<\/p>\n<\/p>\n I did that.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n There is something in me worth using.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p>\n There always was.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p>\n I have caught myself telling the same painful stories over and over.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n A lot.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Sometimes you do it because you are still trying to understand them.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Sometimes because you want someone else to understand.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Sometimes because you are hoping that the next time you tell it, something about the ending will feel different.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n But there comes a point when repeating something stops helping.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n One of the things that helped me most was being reminded of everything I had been doing before pain made it hard to breathe.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Things I had built.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Things I had created.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Ideas I had chased.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Work I had done.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Pieces of myself that existed before everything became so heavy.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Seeing that again made me want to start.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Not fix everything.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Just start.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Then little by little, I wanted to build more.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Create more.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Think about things that had nothing to do with what hurt me.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n I am still not one hundred percent.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n I do not know what one hundred percent would even look like.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n But something changed.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n The desire to build and create started becoming more important to me than the pain.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n It started filling more space.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n That matters.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Because pain takes up as much room as you give it.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Sometimes healing is not about making the pain disappear.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Sometimes you start filling the room with other things.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p>\n I think people misunderstand what it means to move on.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Moving on does not mean something was okay.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n It does not mean forgetting.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n It does not mean staying quiet forever.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n It does not mean forgiving somebody because everyone tells you that you are supposed to.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n It does not mean you stop caring about what happened.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n To me, moving on means refusing to let something consume you.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Refusing to let it control your future.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Refusing to let it turn you into someone you are not.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n That is different.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n You can still say:<\/p>\n<\/p>\n That was wrong.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n That hurt me.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n That changed things.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n I wish it had never happened.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n And then get up the next morning and build a life anyway.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Those things are allowed to exist together.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n There are things I can talk about calmly today that I could not have talked about calmly years ago.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n The facts did not change.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n I did.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n At some point, I was just tired.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n I wanted to be happy again.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Some of the hardest trauma in my life hit during one of the happiest periods of my life.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n And for a long time, that made me feel robbed.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Robbed of time.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Robbed of peace.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Robbed of parts of myself.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Eventually I got tired of feeling robbed.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n I wanted to go find my happy again.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n That sounds almost too simple when I write it.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n But I think there is something important in it.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Sometimes healing does not begin with some profound realization.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Sometimes you are just tired of hurting.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Tired of being angry.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Tired of giving something you hate the first thought in the morning and the last thought at night.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n And somewhere inside that exhaustion is a decision.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n I want something else now.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p>\n There is a phrase people like to use when somebody is trying to let go of anger:<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \u201cDo not let them win.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n I understand what people mean.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n But sometimes they do win.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Sometimes something unfair happens and you cannot fix it.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Sometimes you can be right.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n You can try harder than you knew how to try.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n You can yell the truth until your throat hurts.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n And it still does not change the outcome.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n I think pretending otherwise can make people feel even more trapped.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Because now you are not only hurt.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n You also think healing means admitting defeat.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n I do not believe that.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Taking care of yourself is not surrender.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p>\n Bandaging your wounds is not giving up.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Healing is not an admission that what happened was acceptable.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Moving forward can be a victory too.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Even if the only person who sees that victory is you.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Maybe especially then.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n There is a lot I have lost in different seasons of my life.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n I cannot change all of that.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n But there are things I refuse to voluntarily hand over.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n My peace.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n My relationship.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n My children.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n My future.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n My ability to trust.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n My identity.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n My time.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n All of it.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n I refuse to let pain decide who I am.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p>\n That does not mean pain did not shape me.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Of course it did.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Everything we live through shapes us.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n But shaping something is different from owning it.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Pain can be part of me without becoming the definition of me.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n I absolutely believe some stories still need to be told after you heal.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Healing is not closing the book and throwing it away.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n It is moving to the next chapter.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Humans have always told stories.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Good stories.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Bad stories.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Stories about mistakes.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Stories about survival.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Stories that point somebody in the right direction.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Stories that warn somebody not to take the road we took.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Stories that remind another person they are not the first human being to feel what they are feeling.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n We learn from each other that way.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n So I do not think moving forward means never speaking about the past again.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n The difference is what the story is doing to you when you tell it.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Are you using the story?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p>\n Or is the story still using you?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p>\n That is a question I am learning to ask myself.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n If you have spent years replaying the worst thing that ever happened to you, you probably know every inch of it.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Every conversation.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Every injustice.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Every mistake.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Every moment you wish you could change.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Every thing you wish you had said.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Every thing you wish somebody else had done.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n You can know that story so well that eventually you stop noticing how much of your present life is passing while you are staring backward.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n I do not say that as someone standing safely on shore giving advice.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n I say it because I know what it feels like to be in the water.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n A rip current is powerful because fighting straight against it exhausts you.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n You can spend everything you have trying to overpower something stronger than you.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n And eventually you have nothing left.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Sometimes surviving means stopping that fight.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Not because the current was right.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Not because you wanted to go where it took you.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Not because you surrendered.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Because you realized fighting it the same way was going to drown you.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n You move differently.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n You get yourself out.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Then you find the shore again.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n I think pain can be like that.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n You can spend years fighting yesterday.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Trying to change it.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Trying to win against it.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Trying to make everybody see it exactly the way you do.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n And meanwhile, today keeps happening.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n There is still a life happening around you.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n People who love you.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Things waiting to be built.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Things you have not created yet.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Places you have not been.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n People you have not met.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Versions of yourself you have not become.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Your story deserves to be told.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Tell it honestly.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Tell it when telling it has purpose.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Learn from it.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Let somebody else learn from it too.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n But remember something.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n You are allowed to leave the scene.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p>\n You are allowed to find the shore.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n You are allowed to go be happy again.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Your story can be part of your life without becoming the place where you live.<\/strong><\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I believe talking is one of the best ways to process almost anything. Sometimes your mind is moving so fast that you cannot even tell what you actually\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":6,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/joshuazaleski.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/joshuazaleski.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/joshuazaleski.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joshuazaleski.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joshuazaleski.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/joshuazaleski.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joshuazaleski.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/joshuazaleski.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joshuazaleski.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joshuazaleski.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Acceptance is not the same thing as peace<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
Sometimes you find yourself playing a game you never agreed to<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
I used to think understanding would set me free<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
Writing gives everything somewhere to go<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
Ms. Raymond saw something I could not<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
Pain made me forget that I liked to build things<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
Moving on does not mean pretending<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
I got tired of feeling robbed<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
Sometimes the other person does win<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
I refuse to let pain define me<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
Healing does not require silence<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
Get out of the current<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n