Loving the Wounded Soul

“The unending paradox is that we do learn through pain.” Madeleine L’Engle

To be real, I’m grateful for my pain. Any kind of pain. The pain of loss, the pain of being misunderstood, the pain of failure, the pain of lover breaking your heart, the pain of a forgotten friend - any pain, really.

I’m grateful because there is just something raw and pure in the eyes of the one who has battled many storms and climbed the hardest mountains with tears and sweat. The body may be young but the eyes have seen a lifetime of lessons inked with a strength that is truly one of a kind. These people will do anything in their power to radiate the sunshine they’ve built from rotten pain over the years, and they will go out of their way to spread love around the world because they know what it’s like to be shattered - be it in halves or a million. These people are strong yet sensitive, firm yet soft. These people have so many stories to share, you can laugh with them under the stars or sit with them in an empty parking lot and they will change your world with their words and emotions.

Sometimes, life is painful and messed up. It gets complicated at the worst of times, and sometimes you have no idea where to go or what to do. Lots of times people just let themselves get lost, dropping into a wide open, huge abyss. But that’s why we have to keep trying. We have to push through all that hurts us, work past all our memories that are haunting us. Sometimes the things that hurt us are the things that make us strongest. A life without experience, in my opinion, is no life at all. And that’s why I tell everyone that, even when it hurts, never stop yourself from living.

Remember behind every beautiful thing, there’s some kind of pain.

The meaning of life,

Annisa Azzahra