Some pains look larger than others, just the way the distance between 0 and 2 appears greater than the distance between 0 and 1. From afar, one life seems fuller, happier, more complete than another. One person seems to have achieved more, loved more, lived more. And we spend years standing at the edge of our own existence, comparing the size of our lives to theirs, believing that our struggles are smaller, our joys less meaningful, our existence somehow lesser.

Yet both still contain an endlessness of moments, feelings, memories, losses, and versions of ourselves.Perhaps that is the tragedy of being human: we keep measuring life by length instead of depth.

We count years instead of emotions. Achievements instead of battles survived. Smiles shown instead of grief hidden. We look at someone who has lived more visibly and assume they have lived more deeply. But some people carry entire universes within a few silent years, while others move through decades without ever truly touching their own souls.

Maybe healing works the same way too.

A person can hold an infinite amount of grief inside one ordinary afternoon. A single conversation........

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