Shattered

Today I bought a stack of tablets, ones I can make messy. I am completely obsessive with tablets that have carefully constructed tidy little categories, thought flows and charts. These I am going to make very messy, like this jumbled world inside me at the moment.

I had placed naive hope, and faith in him. I saw him as Prince Charming for many years. He was my forever, the person I thought I would die besides. I trusted him to protect me, and cherish me. The betrayal came. Doesn’t it always? It broke me. My naive optimism was destroyed in the blink of an eye. When I fragmented I watched my Being shatter around me. Like shards of glass. Sparkling, glistening and floating around me, away from me. Azure, violet and white with light catching the beautiful mirror quality of the pieces. I remember the moment like it was yesterday. Then pain came. So much pain. My body felt like it had been broken into a million pieces. I turned against my own body. All the parts of me I had healed, felt broken again. I thought I was finally loved. The painful traumatic childhood was going to finally be over, and I would have peace. It felt like I had finally really relaxed into my life feeling safe. It was gone in what felt like a heartbeat. That wasn’t the end of my undoing. I shattered further. It seemed to be impossible I would break further. But I did. It’s as if someone came walking over the glass pieces of my soul stomping on them. Crushing them underfoot piece by piece while I felt ever crack in my bones.

And then the darkness came. So much darkness.

She told me… “You can avoid your soul work. But, she’s says my name in a stern voice; you know that black hole you feel right here ( she pointed to the exact spot on my body it was growing from ) that will grow and eat your body alive. It will never stop consuming and it will consume you. That is the nature of this consumption. It will consume everything. You have to choose if you want to live while being dead or alive.”

She pointed to my heart, to the right side of my heart and told me when I was ready to listen, the light would be waiting for me. It would guide me back to myself. She laughed an old lady laugh, a chuckle weathered by age and experience. I thought she was crazy. We had hours long conversations because somehow she saw me in ways no one ever had. She put words to things I could feel but didn’t understand. She called me out with such clarity, depth and precision. I felt terrible and freed at the same time.

A year went by. The darkness creeped further into my cells beckoning, waiting to consume me the panic started setting in. Days I spent in bed unmoving. There was nothingness and blackness. Creeping blackness. Tentacles twisting around me. I cried, and cried some more. I was angry this was happening to me. How could this happen to me? I lost all faith in everything and everyone. The pain gnawed. The suicidal thoughts lived with me daily. I had researched how to slit my wrists, how many meds I need to to keep the pain at bay… I wanted to poetically bleed out slowly in a large puddle of blood. For someone to find my body looking like a metaphorical art piece. My desire for a slow death was a metaphor for how it felt watching myself shatter and the slow bleeding that was happening inside me. I remembered the crazy old woman’s words in the midst of a brutal night of pain. Cursing under my breathe I called her crazy. But I had nothing to lose, did I? Eventually when there was only a little strength left I cried in a quiet voice “ I don’t know what, or how or what I am talking to but please take me home. I want to live. I don’t want to die. I don’t want this pain. She’s crazy but maybe she isn't wrong. She had been right about so much.” I didn’t know what it all meant. Or what was happening. But I couldn’t take the pain anymore. It was going to kill me. I felt a light illuminate besides my heart and it was the first time I felt this warmth in my body. Over time my whole body filled with this warm light, but that would take 7 years. That night I had a little less pain and slept peacefully. A little less pain was all I needed.

It moved me. A force within me I didn’t understand. Told me to go. Go where I didn’t want to. All the places I feared. It took me from what I loved. The people I loved. The journey was long and cold. I got lost a few times, or maybe I didn’t. I don’t really know anymore. It led me to obsessively read, to ask questions, and to sit with teachers in many walks of life. To make so many choices that didn’t make “sense” at the time. It got so confusing. Sometimes I could see and at times I could see nothing. As time went on I found pieces of me of me in the strangest places and moments. I didn’t even understand what “it” was.

Eventually I have come home. The tiny flame by my heart grew to engulf my body burning away layers of pain. I feel bruised and scarred. Like I have been to a battle and back. Humbled and broken but put back together. Pieces of me I brought home and stitched back together, lovingly, painstakingly and tenderly. The seams still ache as they are fusing. Sometimes a leak pops up requiring some patchwork. Sometimes I don’t know where I am going or what this all means. Maybe that is the beauty of it all, the process. Maybe I don’t need to know. What I found during this process of piecing myself back together is priceless, home. My body.

Kintsugi in making.

( To be continued… may my writing help you find pieces of yourself and remind you that you are worthy fighting for )

~ Xena Grace