You don’t heal & then live. You live & that becomes the healing. Nobody tells you that. Nobody tells you some days you’ll feel like you’re held together with tape & stubbornness & somehow that still counts. That breathing counts. That getting out of bed counts. That laughing at something stupid counts. Some days you’ll swear you’re going backwards, but you’re not, you’re just human & humans heal in crooked lines. Because you don’t notice the healing until you’re on the other side of it. And mercy is just the moment you stop punishing yourself for the ways you survived.