They say, “Give it time.”
That heartbreak? Time will fix it.
That embarrassment that keeps you up at night? Time will make you forget.
That grief, that ache, that emptiness? Time will wash it away.
But does it really?
We’re often told that time heals all wounds, that with enough days and months and years, the pain dulls, the memories fade, and we eventually move on. But I don’t think it works like that, not truly. In my experience, time doesn’t actually heal. It simply diverts. Life piles on new responsibilities, new distractions, new tasks. Deadlines, errands, meetings, groceries, texts, calls. The world never stops spinning and in the midst of all that chaos, we don’t notice that we’ve tucked the pain away somewhere deep. Not gone, just buried.
But it’s still there
It creeps in quietly, without warning. Maybe it’s a scent, a song, a familiar place, or just a moment of stillness. And suddenly, that memory, the one you thought was long forgotten crashes into you with the same force it had the first time. A wave of emotion surges. Your heart races. Your throat tightens. Your soul aches. Time doesn’t erase the wound. It simply lets it become a scar. And the thing about scars? They don’t bleed every day. They don’t scream in pain all the time. But they never vanish either. They’re permanent. Faded maybe, but always there. A gentle brush across the skin or soul, and suddenly, the past breathes again.
We grow around our pain, like vines curling around broken branches. We smile more, We laugh, We even feel joy again. But beneath the surface lies a scar that shaped us a reminder of the moment we changed, lost, broke, or loved too much.
Some scars teach us strength.
Some scars remind us of our softness.
Some scars we carry in silence because we’re too afraid to reopen them with words.
But whether we speak about them or not, they exist and maybe that’s okay.
Maybe healing isn’t about forgetting or getting over it. Maybe it’s about learning to live with it, not in suffering, but in acceptance. Recognizing that pain was once a part of us, and maybe still is, and choosing to move forward with it, not without it. Because the truth is, some memories are not meant to fade. They are too real, too defining, too raw. They become the architecture of our soul. And the scar? It’s just a proof that we survived.
So no, time doesn’t heal everything.
It just gives us space to breathe.
It hands us moments of silence where we can hear ourselves again.
It offers us the strength to stand, even if we still limp.
But the scar remains quietly, permanently and sometimes all it takes is one thought, one whisper from the past, for the pain to stir again.
Scars don’t fade.
We just learn how to live with them, with grace, with resilience, and with the quiet strength of someone who’s been through it and still chooses to keep going.