Field Note: Healing Is Not the Same as Fixing AKA I’m here for the healing.

For much of my life, I thought I needed to be fixed.

Fixed meant:
more acceptable,
less emotional,
less reactive,
less longing,
less sensitive,
less strange.

It meant finding the correct explanation,
the correct productivity system,
the correct relationship,
the correct self-improvement language,
the correct mask.

Fixing always implied defect.

Something wrong.
Something to solve.

But healing has not felt like that at all.

Healing has felt more like returning.

Returning to my body.
Returning to my instincts.
Returning to the quiet voice underneath performance,
fear,
overexplaining,
and self-abandonment.

Healing has not made me less myself.

If anything,
it has made me more aware of how deeply myself I have always been.

Healing did not erase my sensitivity.
It taught me how to stop apologizing for it.

Healing meant no longer sharing myself with people who could not hold me.

Healing did not make me stop longing.
It helped me understand what the longing was pointing toward.

Healing did not turn me into someone easier for the world to categorize.

It helped me stop trying so hard to fit into categories that were never built for me.

Fixing seeks correction.

Healing seeks wholeness.

Fixing asks:
“How do I become acceptable?”

Healing asks:
“How do I become fully alive inside my own life?”

There is a difference.

A profound one.

I no longer believe I am broken because I feel deeply,
need beauty,
love slowly,
or experience the world with intensity.

I think I am healing because I finally understand the landscape I belong to.

And because of that,
I smile more now.

Not because everything is solved.

But because I am no longer trying to repair myself into someone else.

Others may thing outwardly I’ve “fixed” something that was wrong,

but what I’ve done is removed myself from their evaluations.

I’m no longer available for them to harm.

And it was wrong for them to harm me.

And it is right for me to protect myself by no longer being available.

I’m more whole now.

I didn’t change anything about myself.

I healed and am learning to keep myself safe from those that would not be safe.

Healing seeks wholeness.

Fixing often asks us
to exile the very things
that make us ourselves.

I won’t make the mistake again.