THAT VERSION OF HER IS DEAD

It has taken a long time but the person I used to be is gone and I will do everything in my power to never let her back. She was so broken from years of unimaginable abuse. That brokenness produced a very angry, hurtful, deceitful person. Her brokenness led her to seek comfort in drugs and alcohol which turned her into someone that could not be trusted or depended upon. That brokenness left her cold and often unfeeling and unsympathetic. She was trying so desperately to hang on and find the will to live that she had no room for anything or anyone else. She came to believe over time that no one could be trusted and that monsters lurked in every corner. Fear drove her every action and reaction and made it unbearable to live day to day. The people in her life came to expect the volatile explosions, fits of anger and desperate need to control everything around her. They also came to realize that she was emotionally unavailable and lacked the ability to properly connect with another human being.

It’s not her fault that she became broken. She never asked to be born, let alone born into a violent abusive household. She didn’t start out life broken and shattered, it happened over time. Years and years of horrific and violent abuse would chip away slowly until the cracks got bigger and bigger and then pieces began to fall away. No one along the way tried to glue the cracks or put the pieces back together. To the contrary, most encounters led to more destruction. Eventually she began to break small pieces off herself feeling that she was beyond repair anyways. Alcohol, drugs, anorexia, self-harm, they all sent pieces flying. The degree of destruction left her almost unrecognizable from the beautiful innocent little girl that entered into this world. Would it ever be possible to repair such damage? Where would one even begin? What about the lost or missing pieces? It seemed hopeless to many.

About ten years ago, unbeknownst to her at the time, someone would come along with enough strength and courage to take on the daunting task of finding all the pieces in hopes of repair. The first couple years would be spent just finding the damn pieces, but hope came when the first piece was glued back together, and she began her sobriety. Gluing that first piece was the most difficult but also the most critical if there was to be a chance of gluing a second piece. Once the first piece was in, then came the second and third and fourth and so on. The first several pieces each took a great deal of time and care. It was slow going in the beginning and often time there had to be adjustments. Once in a while a piece had to be rebroken and glued again for it to really sit correctly. After a few years passed, she began to resemble that girl that innocently entered into this world with a beautiful heart and great potential.

Sadly, the outside world struggled to see past the cracks and weakened areas. Some would look and see it as an opportunity to strike and try to break a piece or two off. Add a little glue. Cracked again, add more glue. It seemed that the imbalance of those breaking pieces off versus those gluing them back together was making the repair a bit challenging. She wasn’t entirely helping the situation however because she was not protecting the fragility of what had been repaired and until she was willing to do that, there was always going to be a threat of more breakage. She did find along the way, the ability to open up and trust a few more people to assist in the repair and that definitely made it a little easier, but she relied too heavily on them to protect it while not taking that responsibility upon herself.

About a year ago, there was a huge blow, and a large piece broke. She couldn’t find the piece although claiming to have searched for it. She reached out and begged for those who had been helping thus far to please find the piece and put it back. They tried so hard, looking high and low but to no avail. After almost a year, it seemed hopeless. The piece appeared to be gone and without it, the brokenness was so blindingly obvious. To those that had been helping, it felt sad and there was a sense of both helplessness and frustration. They knew they had done everything to help find it but were not quite sure that she honestly had done the same. To the rest of the outside, it looked all too familiar. “See! Still broken, still the same as always.” It was up to her now. Give up or keep looking and find it!

There would be a requirement of complete and utter honesty with herself and that scared her. Could she face such honesty? Faced with a decision to allow the outside world to be right about her brokenness or gather up the strength, she chose to be completely honest with herself. In that deep heartbreaking honesty, she would find that missing piece. Finding it would drop her to her knees in tears that would come from the depths of her soul. She realized that she had it all along but was so blinded by the gaping hole, she couldn’t see anything else. She realized that she was so used to seeing herself in pieces that when put back together it was a vision so unfamiliar that she couldn’t recognize it as herself. Only in allowing the hole to remain was she comfortable with what she saw so much so that she would add small cracks here and there to feel better. It was imperative to let go of what was easy and comfortable for what God intended her to be.

The pieces are back together but the glue is still drying. Knowing now that the glue she chose to use before wasn’t as strong as it needed to be, she has chosen a much stronger one this time that will require a much longer drying time. That is okay however, because in the end it will be so much stronger and harder to break. When she looks in the mirror, the vision before her is still very unfamiliar but there are no visible broken areas to be seen. It is only with time that that vision will become more and more familiar and comfortable to look at. In the meantime, the focus needs to be on protecting the fragility while the glue dries. That protection begins with not allowing the outside to look at the current vision and see the broken version. She is no longer in pieces but must continue to show that with her day-to-day actions and reactions. A beautiful bowl with a deep crack cannot hold soup the same way as a beautiful bowl without a crack.

I have a great deal of work to still do to heal from all the trauma that I have endured but I am not the same person I was ten years ago, seven years ago, a year ago. I realize that I have to allow that to be seen outwardly for perceptions to change but I will no longer allow myself to be treated in the same way that the broken version of myself was!! New me, new rules!