The Broken Places

One of the long thin bones in my right wrist is a little thicker than all the others, because I broke it when I was a little girl. There was an accident on the playground, and my poor wrist was given more weight than it could bear. It cracked a little under the pressure, and I insisted to anyone who would listen that it was broken, but no one believed me. Which is a little odd given my aversion to hyperbole…

My father sported a broken foot at the time, and the next day as I was dutifully refilling his coffee cup, that bone snapped through. He supposed that ten cups of hot black coffee in his lap was a suitable fine to pay for doubting me, and promptly made his afternoon appointment with the orthopedic doctor a double feature. The best part was walking into class with a cast after my teacher had scolded me for insisting it was broken the day before. I smiled as she paled, and happily collected an A in penmanship even though the cast made my handwriting look like I held the pen in my mouth.

Six weeks later, the doctor sawed my cast off, freeing three broken pencils and a small stick along with my pale, spindly, dirty forearm. As happy as I was to lose the itchy and inconvenient plaster, alien arm made me self-conscious and wary of its use. Upon noticing that I was still favoring it a few days after the cast came off, Daddy intervened.

Did you know that broken bones grow back even stronger than they were? Your wrist bone is a little thicker and sturdier now than it was before you broke it. You just need to get used to trusting it again, and build the muscle back up. Which won’t happen if you keep babying it.

It took me another twenty or so years to realize the same thing about emotional breaks.

We think of them as our weaknesses, mistakes, or flaws; and at the moment of impact, they absolutely were. The moment we tend to our injuries and encourage healing and growth we’ve begun the process of thickening those bones. That, for most, is the hardest part: admitting load failure and finding the willingness to change underneath layers of pride and fear.

I hardly ever hesitate to cry out in pain and retreat to dress my wounds.

My struggle has always been trusting fresh grown bone beneath atrophied muscle and and the new pink skin of freshly healed wounds. The deep ache accompanying the injury haunts me, and I favor and protect those places long after they’ve healed, till the scars are ghost-whispers on the flesh of my soul.

Over the course of the week, I’ve realized I’m not alone in this battle. Amusingly enough, it is the people that love me the best in my broken places that doubt the beauty and strength of their own. Much of the gift this space has given me comes from your deep and devoted love and admiration for what I too often consider the worst parts of myself.

I started writing semi-anonymously because I wanted the freedom to write uncensored about the hardest and scariest things (some of which were the truest, best most joyful things) without judgment, social risk or self-disclosure remorse. In four years, I’ve made some incredible and meaningful friendships with other bloggers. Our hearts’ secret songs found resonance in the other’s melody and we couldn’t resist that siren call if we wished to. That is a powerful thing, perhaps the most powerful thing about the internet.

But then something even more powerful happened. I shared this space with some offline friends. I shared space in my offline life with people I met through social media. The fourth wall slowly crumbled to dust, and far from ripping a hole in the time-space continuum, it created an authentic life. An incredible, precious, authentic life with unlimited potential and opportunity precisely because of the people who actually decided to get to know me because they read here (still blows my ever-loving mind) and the people who already loved me who loved me harder after discovering this part of me (miracle of holy miracles). I put my broken places on display, and you loved me more, not less for my scars. All of you.

So. I just want you to know:

I love you more in your broken places too.