I didn’t finally heal in some perfect, cinematic way. I just got tired of pretending I hadn’t been hurt.

I stopped minimizing what I went through. Stopped laughing things off that never should’ve happened in the first place.

My healing didn’t look like triumph. It looked like honesty. It looked like telling the truth to myself when no one else was listening.

Because sometimes the most radical thing you can do is stop pretending you were never broken. And let that truth breathe, without shame.