I am broken. Profoundly broken. Humpty Dumpty broken. Having seen through the veils of separation, rather than a life of bliss, I find my inherent brokenness — that which I ran from, that which pushed me into self sacrifice and sucked out all that I was — still here, the same but different.

I taste the hunger for intimacy that I pushed away, the desperation for love, to love and be loved, that I stuffed inside my words, hid with my studied aloofness, my absolute fixation on being strong. Boy oh boy was I strong, so strong that I could hardly be reached at all.

Strength is not always a good thing. It is often used to hide the trauma inside, to shield the brokenness, to disguise the abject fear of not being wanted, of no one to hold me, the self contempt of being worth less, of not being worthy at all.

I weep for the broken state of my heart, for the heart of humanity, for this I is one I, its wounds my wounds. I cannot escape it and I am no longer willing to try. It is … I am … so I will be so without apology.

My specialness gone, sinking beneath the waves, no longer treading the water pretending even a modicum of strength, I sink into the depths of our shared humanity. I drown, unprotected and untethered to ideas of something else, something better. of being worth more or worth less.

Dreams of healing, yearning for a whole world, hopes of enlightenment smashed up against walls of unshed tears. Cries of pick me, pick me, pick me once echoing endlessly in self-isolation’s chamber, now seen, now heard, now vulnerable. Braced against the dimming of the light or untethered from the brace, what is needs no fixing, cannot be fixed.

This is no lament, no sad song oozing of self-pity. It may be the first real thing I have ever written. I am no longer willing to avoid my humanness, to run from my pain, to package my self-judgment in pretty wrapping, to hide in my spiritual understanding. There is no where to hide anymore. All my hiding places have risen from the darkness of need into the light of ‘just this’, into my life exactly as it is.

All the spiritual work has done its job. It has left me with no safe place to abandon my experience and no desire to do so. It has shown me the truth of what I am, what this life really is, our divinity. It has also shown me the preciousness, the not to be missed or bypassed aliveness, that is a human birth, life, and death. There is beauty in brokenness, in our humanity.

Now — nothing remains but to live it, my divinity and my humanity for they are not two.