Broken

The better that my life gets - measured almost entirely by my own level of happiness plus my daughter's level of happiness - the more I see how broken I was.

The more I see how broken I am.

I was crazy to get married to Bryan.  That is not because he was or is a bad person, that is because we were a terrible fit.  He doesn't value physical health (he overeats and drinks too much and doesn't exercise and doesn't have good sleep patterns and basically does everything on the "don't" list from your doctor), he doesn't love adventure, he doesn't care much about his home, and he doesn't like responsibility.  He doesn't volunteer, he's not a nature-guy, and he doesn't really like his job (a choice, given his education and possibilities).  He enjoys a lot of down time reading or watching books, but not doing (and he wanted to read "his" books, and the best way for him to not read a book was for me to recommend it to him).  He didn't want children.  He likes things easy, without a lot of effort.  He doesn't cook or clean.  He doesn't like taking care of other people.

Does this make him a horrible person?  No.

But I can not think of a worse fit for me, AND I PICKED HIM.

I changed all that: I insisted that our marriage change, and then I insisted that he work on his end, and I did a lot of work on myself, and I changed myself and got a backbone to do what I believed in, and still things didn't change on his end, and I ended it.  He was hurt and angry and said that I didn't love him unconditionally, and I see now that even through it all, he had a right to be hurt.  After all, maybe it was me who changed, and not him, and he would have gone on in misery with me for years without divorce, but I ultimately said, "Enough."

I was willing to accept that we didn't fit together, until the grief of it, the grief of trying to fit something that didn't fit, nearly killed me.  Dramatic?  Maybe.  But my breast cancer and my divorce are tied together in my mind, and my unhappiness was the link between them.

Leaving him did not instantly heal all that is broken in me.  I have come so far, but I have a long ways to go, and I see that part of my journey more clearly now.

I am healing my career, my body, my day to day life.  I am so proud of all that I have done to repair what was broken in me, and I'm putting the pieces back together carefully, filling the cracks with gold.

But like any puzzle, it's easy to see where the missing pieces are.

I am not good at romantic relationships.  I never have been.  I have been broken, and brought that brokenness with me to romance.

Right now, I don't see a romantic future.  When I gaze at the future, I see.....nothing.  A curtain is drawn, or it's a fog, or it's all darkness....but I can't see it.

What I know is that I'm terrified of choosing badly again.  I'm terrified of bringing my brokenness, and building out of that brokenness (and a house made of broken pieces would not be a very good house).  I'm fearful that I will shatter what I have so carefully pieced back together.  I fear finding myself once again, the frog in the boiling water, suddenly aware that I am moments from death unless I change everything.

I am good at being single. I have a good life: friends who come for my birthday, wonderful holiday celebrations, a warm and loving relationship with my daughter, manageable finances.  I'm well fed, things are pretty clean, the bills are paid.  This holiday, my tree is up, the porch is strung with lighted garlands, there are cards hanging on the wall.  Life is good, and I am deeply happy.

And grateful.  So intensely grateful to be happy.  I know how blessed I am, and I count my blessings all the time.  I'm alive, and here to enjoy my daughter, my good health, and my abundance.  Deeply grateful.

So I hope it's not ungrateful of me to say that I see my brokenness, and that I still hope, wish and pray that it will be healed.  That I can see that I struggle to let someone into my life, fearful of what that may mean, that maybe I have not been ready for love.

I'd like to be ready for love.  I know that I may not be.

But I have a pot of gold, and I will keep gluing the pieces of my brokenness back together.  It is painstaking work, and so important not to make a mistake: I want the bowl that is me to be smooth, and whole, and I will not go quickly and risk putting in a piece at an angle and ruining the whole.  I will go slowly, cautiously, but I will keep working at it.

I will not pretend that I am whole.

I will not pretend that I know where the lost pieces are, but I will climb on my hands and knees, looking for them under the sofa, wedged under the moldings against the wall, slipped under the refrigerator.  I will go into the dark corner with the dust bunnies and carefully extract these bits of me, wash them like they are a newborn infant, tend to them, and put them back in their place.

There's that famous line of the movie where the female lead says to her romantic interest, "You complete me."  Make no mistake, that is not what I am looking for: no man holds the pieces of me, no man can complete me.  These pieces belong to me, and life has broken them, and I have misplaced them, but they are mine and mine alone, and only I will recognize them (with, perhaps, a bit of divine intervention).

But I think it's remarkable that now I can see where they are missing, and I know to look for them, and that I can tend to them carefully.

I do not know if I will ever be ready for true love.  I do not know if I will be held tenderly the way I wish to be held, and to hold.  I do not know if I will ever model for my daughter what deep love like that looks like.  I hold a vision of what true partnership looks like, and I begin to hope that I will not need to become perfect in order to attain that vision, and that perhaps someone can see how I have been broken and love me anyway.
I will keep working on myself, loving my life, focusing on the goodness in it, while I dream of the kind of love that everyone longs for in their lives.

The man for me will see my scars, and weep for their pain, and for their beauty.  He will have his own cracks, filled with gold, and I will stroke them and wonder at them, and we will drink deeply from each other's cups.

I am not young.  I am not fresh and new.

But still, I think, something good, fresh, and new awaits, and it will be all the better because of this slow work I am doing.

Let it be so.  Amen.