There’s a particular kind of ache that defies the logic of time. You’d think that after all these years, after all the growing and changing and moving forward, the sharp edges would have dulled. That the memories would have softened into something sepia-toned and distant, viewed through the merciful haze of years gone by.

But they haven’t….

We’ve known each other for decades now. Decades. That word alone should carry weight enough to cushion anything, to transform old wounds into old stories, the kind you tell at dinner parties with a rueful smile and a shrug. “Can you believe we used to…?” followed by laughter, followed by the comfort of knowing it’s all ancient history.

Except it isn’t. Not really….

I can still replay those moments with stunning clarity. The exact tone of voice. The way the light fell in on their face, the wind dancing with their hair. The precise sensation of my stomach dropping, of realizing that someone who knew me better than almost anyone could still choose to hurt me that way. Maybe especially because they knew me that well. Maybe that’s what made it cut so deep.

The strangest part is that I’m not the same person I was then. I’ve lived whole lifetimes since those moments happened. I’ve learned things, unlearned things, built myself up and broken myself down and built myself up again differently. I’ve forgiven, or at least I think I have. I’ve moved on, whatever that means.

And yet….

Every once in a while, something triggers the replay. A song. A place. The particular slant of afternoon light. And suddenly I’m there again, feeling it all with the same intensity as if no time has passed at all. The hurt arrives fresh, like a package I never asked for but can’t refuse delivery on.

I think what makes it worse is the history. If it had been a stranger, someone passing through my life briefly, the hurt would have context, boundaries. But when it’s someone who’s been there for chapters and volumes of your story, someone who witnessed your becoming, someone whose own story is tangled up with yours in ways you can’t fully unknot, the hurt has roots. It grows into everything.

People say time heals all wounds, and maybe that’s true for some wounds. But I’m starting to think that some hurts don’t heal so much as they become part of your architecture. They’re load-bearing now. You’ve built around them, incorporated them into the structure of who you’ve become. Removing them would mean collapsing something essential.

Maybe that’s okay. Maybe the hurt gets to stay, gets to be replayed occasionally, gets to remind me that I’m human and that the people I love are human and that love across decades is complicated and messy and sometimes includes carrying pain alongside joy.

We’re still in each other’s lives, in whatever form that takes now. And somehow, impossibly, I can hold both truths at once: that I still feel the hurt when I replay those memories, and that I wouldn’t erase the history we share. Not the good parts, not the bad parts, not any of it.

Because maybe the hurt is just proof that it mattered. That they mattered. That we mattered.

And after all these years, after all this time, maybe that’s worth something too.

Luv,

KC