I’ve been struggling lately1. My chest seems to cave in on itself, a knotted ball of black wire pulsing at the center, my breath catches, sometimes it’s hard to breathe. Insensitive words, both from me and directed at me, had me questioning how I show up in the world, the kindness of who I know myself to truly be, and again, my worth and lovability. This has been the dance of the past year, two steps forward, a step to the side, sometimes a dip and a drop.
This past year of heartbreak has been one of constant questioning. Questioning my worth, questioning how mature and put-together I thought I was, questioning my strength and consistency and truth. Questioning how much vulnerability and openness I should share, how soon. Questioning my boundaries, what I owe others, what I owe to myself, what I feel comfortable asking from my friends and family, what I’m willing to give.
Right after the move to western Massachusetts, I knew I needed to get out of my head and emotions. They were too big, too all-encompassing to handle. I ran toward things that scared me, both small and big, and made fear and anxiety a friend, a constant companion. Then, this past fall, after a few weeks of school and my Dublin trip, I fell into my quiet period. Fell into the deep well of hurt and clawing questioning. Began meditating consistently, daily, even when the chaos and monsters in my head were screaming at their worst. Started yoga, learning to love this forty-five-year-old body, appreciate the soft flesh and sharp angles, be okay with the imperfections. I started understanding how to look for signs of comfort in the quiver of a horse’s bottom lip, a direct result from how I showed up to the lesson, how present I was in the moment, to begin to understand the subtle inclinations of a horse’s heart, understand they are a reflection of me. I began to sit and feel the hard bits, truly feel them, understand there was a delta between who I was and who I wanted to be. And now, this spring semester with a course in compassion has let me dive into that well with some kindness and understanding toward the woman I was.
If any of these silly, little posts say much, it is that I have often felt not-good-enough. Through a lot of reflection, reading, working with my therapist, yoga, horse lessons, talking with new and old friends, and my two courses this school year, I think I’ve found the reasoning behind this. They aren’t important here, but they’ve been helpful for me to understand what caused this feeling of insufficiency, and why I looked to other people to fill that void.
I am broken, and that brokenness is beautiful. Being broke is kind of part of the human condition, it is part of our shared humanity. The First Noble Truth in Buddhism is that life is suffering. We all experience it. From the big hurts (from the moment we are born, we are journeying toward death) to the little ones (hunger pains before lunch, unrequited love), we endure suffering. Sometimes this suffering is a direct result of our actions, or perhaps being unaware of our actions. We aren’t handed a manual for mindfulness on our first day of kindergarten (which we totally should be!), we aren’t taught how to deal with the angry, small, petty demon in our head that screams at us constantly. When I finally grasped that those words don’t actually come from me2, what a revelation! As I have heard said more times than I can count recently, your faults are not your fault, but they are your responsibility. I find such comfort and relief in that truth.
Brokenness isn’t inherently bad. Hardship isn’t a bad thing. Hardship creates resiliency. My past is scattered with hardship: the car accident, falling down a mountainside in the Sierra Nevadas, my first few years in Denver, a failed marriage with a person with schizophrenia, my heartbreak this past year. Suffering is just part of the deal when we sign that contract to be human. Suffering is necessary to find our shared humanity; it is the one thing we can understand in another because we can understand our own. Sitting with that is a gift. When you think about it, we are all literally just broken apart stardust, we all come from the same source. How can we not understand the brokenness in all of us?
I spoke to my mother a few months ago about the accident, about that time afterward. She said my therapist at the time told her that I was hurting but I knew how to deal with it, that I was resilient enough to handle it, that that particular broken period wouldn’t break me. The past is often changed by the present, by how we remember things, how we reinterpret the events. There has been this narrative of feeling like I owe something to the woman that died, that there is inherently something bad in me because of an event that I truly had no direct part in causing. This story I tell myself has been corrupted and warped by a mind that has felt less than for far too long. The friends I have made this past year, and the ones that have stuck with me for decades, have shown up for me, have sat with the hard bits, have allowed me to make mistakes and have forgiven me. This alone has allowed me to give myself some grace, some self-compassion. I don’t know if it’s possible to truly convey how much more I like this woman I am today. While this heartbreak year has been difficult and hard, I am eternally grateful for having had to weather it; it has given me the person I am now.
No one is responsible for putting me back together, reconfiguring me. What I have realized is that I asked this, without explicitly asking, of my former partners, and it was unfair. What a burden. And I am not responsible for putting anyone else back together. But I want help and to help. Openness and vulnerability are qualities I value, things I don’t want to shy away from, conversations I want to have with the important people in my life. I want to be part of our collective togetherness. I want friends and a partner that can handle these broken bits with some care and kindness, that show up with the same tenderness I think I bring, that understand growth and change occur when we extend a hand, communicate, and share. I want friends and a partner who understand the beauty of the brokenness, who understand the sheer joy of that brokenness. I want it all with the people I love: the good and the bad, the sad and the happy. I want the fullness of broken humans.
That broken stardust we all are? Let’s create epic shooting stars.