After you tear yourself apart--trying to remove the fear, or self-doubt, or whatever other horrible, destructive thing your trauma buried inside you--you have to decide how you want to go about putting yourself back together. This would probably be easier if you could do it all in one clean sweep--one day you excise what's hurting you, the next day you patch the holes--but the truth is, repairing yourself is always going to be a process, and the longer you do it the more little hurts you find hidden inside. More ways that you broke yourself, trying to fit into a situation that was never designed to contain you. That's why it's so important to figure out how you want to be pieced back together. As long as you know the general outlines of the person you want to be, you know what has to go and what can stay.
Design by Shira Sela
When you know the shape of yourself, you know what sort of space you need to walk comfortably though the world. For me, that means reclaiming so many things about myself that I gave up along the way, in order to better fit into a differently shaped life. It means not apologizing, or feeling guilty about the pieces that go together to make up the whole of me.
I am not everyone's favorite shape. I have spurs and bristles that can be abrasive. I am outspoken in my opinions, I question things relentlessly, and I am not one to back down from a debate. But these qualities are part of the outlines of who I am, and I am no longer willing to try to change those outlines. I will reconstruct myself to fill the shape I want to be, spurs, bristles, and all.
But I have lost things along the way. Things that were buried too deeply inside the traumas, that couldn't be saved when I cut the pain out of my life. There is a hole in me where I used to have faith in my own judgement. There's another where a lot of my trust has gone missing. I can't find the place where I used to hold the unself-conscious joy when I sang, or the simple pleasure of inhabiting my body without censure. These things are gone, and while I might gain them back in time, I don't think there's any guarantee. They might be gone forever.
There's a philosophy in Japanese pottery called Kintsukuroi, or Golden Repair, which treats breakage as part of the history of an object, and therefore not something to be disguised or hidden. Pottery is mended with metallic lacquer, highlighting the breaks. It's lovely work, and in many cases it can result in a piece which is more beautiful for having been broken. Western culture teaches us to hide our broken places away, and pretend they don't exist, but I think that's a mistake. I am no longer the unblemished heart that I once was, but the gaps that have been left might be filled with something beautiful. Perhaps I can fill them with bravery, or honesty, or the deep sense of rightness that comes along with accepting who you are, with no excuses.
I cannot help but think that, in the end, it might make me a more beautiful person. More beautiful because I was broken, and chose to reconstruct myself with care. More beautiful because I chose the shape I wanted to be, and added things I loved until I filled that shape perfectly.
And if it doesn't make me more beautiful, at the very least I suspect it will make me more happy.
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