„Candles, Years, and the Spaces Between” Does time really heal all wounds? A birthday reflection on memory, longing, and the lessons time leaves behind.

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They say time heals everything. Perhaps that’s true for small cuts and bruises — the kind you forget about within a week. But there are other wounds, the kind you carry not on your skin, but somewhere deeper. Wounds that do not fade; they simply learn to live inside you, quietly, like an uninvited guest who never leaves.

Today is my birthday. Birthdays are strange markers of time. They don’t measure it the way clocks do — with tidy minutes and hours — but in the distances between who we were and who we are now. They measure it in absences: in the faces no longer at the table, in the voices that now exist only in memory, in the versions of ourselves that feel both impossibly distant and uncannily close.

Waiting and the Elasticity of Time

I’ve often thought about waiting for someone. The way time behaves when you’re anticipating their arrival is unlike anything else — each minute stretches, becomes porous, airy.

Psychologists call this time dilation: when emotional intensity alters our perception of time passing. Hope has a way of slowing the clock. You count the moments, savoring the nearness of what’s to come.

Absence, however, is different. Absence doesn’t stretch time; it hollows it out. Days move forward mechanically, but without a center of gravity. And no matter how many books or articles insist otherwise, you can miss a person for exactly who they are — not just the way they made you feel or the chapter of life they belonged to. You can miss the particular timbre of their voice, the way they occupied a space, the unspoken understanding between you that no one else can replicate.

Memory, Emotion, and the Myth of Healing

Neuroscience tells us that emotionally charged memories are stored differently than ordinary ones. They activate the amygdala, the brain’s emotional alarm system, which in turn strengthens how those memories are encoded. That’s why certain losses remain vivid decades later — the brain doesn’t file them away as “past”; it keeps them active, accessible, as if some part of you refuses to let them go.

The popular phrase “time heals all wounds” may be more wishful thinking than universal truth. Research in grief psychology, particularly the continuing bonds theory, shows that we often maintain an enduring connection with those we’ve lost. The relationship changes form — it becomes internal, symbolic — but it doesn’t vanish. This is why the ache can return with the force of the first day, triggered by a scent, a song, or a place.

Missing, Not Moving On

Culturally, we’re encouraged to “move on,” as if grief were a problem to be solved.

But some loves, some losses, are not meant to be “gotten over.” They are not open loops waiting to be closed — they are part of the architecture of who we are.

Maybe the more honest goal is not to heal in the sense of erasing, but to integrate — to let the absence live alongside the presence of new joys. To carry the memory without letting it paralyze the days ahead.

A Candle for Every Year, A Space for Every Absence

So today, I blow out the candles, knowing each flame marks both a year gone and a year given. I think about how my life now holds layers: the lightness of laughter shared with those still here, and the quiet weight of those who are not. Both are part of the same story.

And I make a wish — not for the wound to disappear, but for the grace to keep walking with it.

To let it soften me, not harden me. To still find beauty in a world where some things, and some people, cannot be replaced.

Because if time cannot heal everything, maybe it’s not meant to. Maybe its real gift is teaching us how to live fully — even when part of us will always be missing someone.