EASIER TO CARRY

Heartbreak has a way of making the world feel unfamiliar. Everything looks the same, but nothing feels right. You still move through the days—answer messages, show up where you need to—but everything carries a strange weight. You smile, maybe, but it doesn’t quite land. You laugh, but it sounds distant, like someone else’s voice. Like there’s a distance between you and the moments you’re in. 

You keep thinking it should’ve passed by now. That the worst is behind you. That time has done what everyone swears it will. And still—there it is. That ache. Quiet. Persistent. Hiding in the corners of your day. Not loud enough to stop you, just present enough to follow you everywhere.

Sometimes the hardest part isn’t what happened. It’s what’s no longer there. The structure you’d built. The habits that gave shape to your days. The way mornings used to begin without question, and now each day arrives without instructions. There’s an emptiness—not always painful, but noticeable. A gap where certainty used to be. 

You play it all back, over and over, like some part of you still thinks you can rewrite the ending. You think, If I had only… —but that road has no end. It leads nowhere but back to the ache. 

It’s not pain, exactly. Just a weird emptiness, like the spark got turned off. These thoughts come without invitation and stay longer than they should. Even when you know better, even when you’re doing the work—it’s hard not to wonder. 

But over time, something shifts. You don’t notice it at first. It looks like small things: sleeping through the night, going a whole afternoon without feeling heavy, looking in the mirror and recognizing yourself a little more. You start to care again—not about everything, not all at once—but enough to feel a spark of interest. You find yourself laughing, and this time it doesn’t feel strange. You go for a walk and don’t carry the weight with you the whole way. 

Healing hurts. It asks more of you than you think you can give. It pulls things out of you you’d rather leave buried. And still, it moves. Gently. Quietly. Sometimes without you realizing it. It creeps in while you’re washing dishes or singing in the car or meeting new people. 

There’s no finish line. No final moment where everything is suddenly fixed. What happens instead is subtle. The sadness softens. The tension in your chest loosens. You feel a little steadier on your feet. And when hard moments come, they still hurt—but they don’t define your whole day. 

You’re not who you were before, and maybe you never will be. But that’s not a loss—it’s a transformation. You’re becoming someone new. Someone quieter, but happier. Not because nothing hurts anymore, but because you’ve learned it doesn’t have to. 

You carry it with peace now—not as pain, but as proof you’ve lived deeply. You’ll make space for joy again—not in spite of what hurt, but because of it. There will be a moment, so small you almost miss it, when you realize—you feel whole in a way that’s brand new.

Anonymous Submission

Published June 16, 2025