Never Not Broken

I think a lot about honesty and what it even is.

When one decides to travel down this path of self-awareness, one discovers that the language used over the course of a lifetime starts to take on different meanings. Honesty is one of those words and concepts.

I’ve been writing for a long time. Pained journals of a “tortured” twelve-year-old (oh the pains!!), gushing love and life explosions of a high school-aged girl, sobbed on pages revealing short stories where the main character resembled my cry for help. Always - always - flitting with this notion of things clouded by victimization and this notion of just being too damn scared to say it, write it! - instead of the courage to spell it out. Were there lies there? Maybe. More than that though, I just didn’t know - didn’t give myself or know how to give myself the honesty of me. 

What made me speak more truth, and write more truth? The pain. What made me live more truth, be more truth? Undoubtedly the pain. You see, the veil of your pretty little life gets ripped open, torn down and you realize you always knew it was shit and there is nothing to be except honest as fuck. Maybe it is that you realize it’s too short. Maybe you sit with the wreckage and realize that this thing you are doing is slipping through your fingers and you see that you wasted so much of it being careful, walking on eggshells, staying in things that weren’t even capable of holding a damn thing. You sit there and even though you know there are countless ways to choose your way through this, you really see just two. Let it swallow you or you swallow it. Either eat or be eaten. 

There are times when I am too scared to be vulnerable. There are times when I don’t feel like I know how to connect without being so. There are times when I feel like it’s pouring out of every pore and my fingers against the keys can’t keep up with the words that want to come. There are times when I just sit so overcome with the understandings and lightbulb moments of love and gratitude and holy shit you found a brilliant diamond in a steamy pile of dog shit! Wow! 

I had this urge to travel down memory lane by way of my photos on my phone not long ago. There is a period in early 2018 when there is nothing. My life had exploded. I notice that when I’m sad, I don’t take pictures. Three months’ worth when the world was swallowing me up and I was allowing it. 

And the thoughts go like this…

You know what, I have written about this too much. I mean, in an attempt to stop the self-judgment - but really - am I still living there in a way? Your life got smashed and you rose above you damn beautiful phoenix…there is so much more to the story … and I see you still hanging on. You say you don’t want that to define you anymore - and you don’t - but you know what else smashed and you fucking phoenix’ed again - your health. Your financial stuff. Your beautiful beautiful life. 

The whole time - that’s what it was - a beautiful life. That’s what you feel when you see those pictures of you when your heart was breaking and broken open and you were playing in the forest with your children and life slowed down for a moment so you could heal. It was just so beautiful. And it is just like a walk my love and I went on today by the river that he said held him while he was depressed. And we were there and it was the most beautiful, serene thing. There are these steps of pain that led us to each other and brought us to this moment of our footsteps on earth that has held all of it. The whole world is an ocean…

There is a goddess for that you know… The Goddess of Never Not Broken - Akhilandeshvari  - Never not broken…always breaking over and over and over again. What is life without it? I used to want to be so perfect. So right and so knowing of everyone else’s needs. I used to want to make everyone happy, have everyone like me, and be just so. I used to want to never appear as broken as I felt and if I could just appear to be so together then I was safe. That’s not for me anymore. I think I did it to try to be closer to people but really it just took me further away because it made me a liar. In this way, it made me the opposite of vulnerable. You see - lying is hiding and the truth is vulnerable - heart open and here.

And with that, we can find the end of a piece of string and begin to roll it into a ball as it leads us back to the possible point of all these writings. If you want the truth, if you want to share your honesty, then you’re going to have to be vulnerable. To me that kind of honesty is not brutal - it is not that poking and prodding that is playing the devil’s advocate - it is instead having the courage to share all of the pieces of the never not broken you.