In Praise of Being Broken

I’m broken. I know when I say this,  your immediate response is likely to be, “You’re not broken, you’re x,y,z” where the x,y,z are things like, “struggling” or “hurt” or “grieving” or “in a transition space.” And I’m not going to deny that those other things may be true, but I get tired of trying to explain what I mean by being broken and why I don’t need you to tell me I’m not (like I’m saying I’m fat or ugly or stupid).

Life has broken me in a variety of ways: the death of my daughter, the loss of my faith, the end of my 30 year marriage, the end of my dream of being a full-time writer, and two and a half years of intermittent, deeply real suicidal ideation. I’m broken and being broken isn’t an inherently bad thing, but it also isn’t something I want other people to deny or to tell me inspirational stories about. I need acknowledgement that my brokenness is real, not a pep talk about how to move on in my life.

I know that the fear is that if people acknowledge the brokenness, the utter destruction of dreams and identity and community, then I (and others) will sit and wallow in their pity and unhappiness. And . . . what? Stop becoming useful cogs in the machine of capitalism? Make you have to change your plans and give something in return, money or a kind word or time to listen? Point out the problem of toxic positivity?

This frustrates me in part because I’ve done everything that I can to make a checklist for on how to prove that I’m moving on with my life. I found a new job, worked my ass off at it, and moved up in promotions numerous times. I’m making a better salary at this job than at any job in my entire life. I’ve done two Ironman World Championships. I’ve continued to write nearly every day and have completed seven novels since the divorce, as well as two memoirs and numerous essays like this one.

I suspect part of this is autism, and by that I mean, my inability/refusal to do what is socially acceptable or to lie to myself about the reality of my life. I am relentless in my truth-telling, mostly because I can’t help myself and partly also because I don’t see why I should. And I am broken, friends. Deeply broken. And I have no intention of trying to fix myself or unbreak myself. I’m not going to turn my pain into an inspirational story. I’m not going to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear or any of the other metaphors you can think of. I’m just going to keep being broken and talking loudly about brokenness.

It's painful to be broken and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wished to go back to unbrokenness. I liked feeling whole. I believed I was on a path to perfection (in Mormon parlance) and I enjoyed most days feeling like God loved and approved of me and that I was checking off the nearly unending list of things necessary to be a good and worthy human. I felt lucky in many ways. I felt “blessed” (this is a word I shudder at now). I felt I had proved myself and that all of the things I’d accomplished were the reason that I had reached this near pinnacle of pride in myself.

Then like Humpty Dumpty, I had a great fall. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put me together again. Because there were missing pieces. There’s no way to kintsugi the kind of messy bits and pieces that remain of me. There’s always going to be something left out from the transition of who I used to be to who I am now. I think I will spend the rest of my life finding pieces of me that I had forgotten about and trying to re-integrate them and not being able to and finding myself very frustrated with that reality.

I’ve had to accept that I am not an inherently good person because “good person” is a phrase that has no meaning outside of an accepted and shared value system. If God exists, then God chose the things that have broken me and I cannot love or worship that God. I’m sorry, I’m not humble enough to do that. I tried and I’m not going to try anymore because it led me down a path of deep suicidality.

Becoming broken has meant accepting that I’m not special anymore (no matter how much I wish I could still be special or “chosen” by God). My belief that I was special led me to my dream to become a writer. I thought I had stories to tell that no one else could tell and that the whole world was waiting for me to tell. Instead, what I’ve learned is that my stories are pretty easily replaceable by the machine of capitalism. Thousands of other writers are eager to step up and take my place. My voice is unique, but that doesn’t make it valuable.

I’ve found other things about myself that are valuable. I’m good at the game of capitalism, but it’s nothing other than a game to me. It doesn’t fix my brokenness to make a good salary. I’m aware that what I do at my day job is necessary, but also that I’m even more easily replaceable there. These are painful truths, and I don’t want you to tell me that I’m wrong (or that I’m not broken).

I am broken and my brokenness is important to me. My life (or the life I thought I had) was shattered and it made me deeply empathetic to the pain others experience. I often wish I had more power or money so I could simply help them. But what I can do is write about my brokenness and about theirs and to say that sometimes the most important thing to do is to witness the brokenness and acknowledge it rather than deny it and to sit with it. Is that all? Can’t we do more?

Please hear me when I say that this impulse to do more is the problem more than brokenness. You want the brokenness to disappear and weirdly, I think it may be the most Christian of all things to stop trying to fix things that cannot be fixed, but to sit with those that mourn and stop trying to tell them to cheer up, that life goes on, that this won’t stop them, that life has many good things still waiting to happen to them. Just don’t with that. Thanks.