Life has a way of making us feel alone regardless of how many people are in our lives. Sometimes I feel panicked and overwhelmed with this sense of feeling broken—unfixable and it leaves me feeling lost. I don’t know where to turn because I’m not sure what the sense in turning to those around me is if it won’t help.
I have spent a lot of my life feeling broken. I remember as a child when my family had mandated therapy thinking that my family was a little bit broken. I remember as a teenager realizing all the implications of the abuse I experienced as a child, and feeling broken. Honestly it still leaves me feeling broken some days.
I remember making mistakes and going too far with people I dated and feeling broken. I remember realizing I was attracted to women, and feeling broken. I remember hitting a breaking point in college when all the stress of trying to help other people without anyone taking care of me became too much and I began struggling with crippling anxiety and feeling broken. I remember a life filled with depression and spending so much energy pretending to be happy and feeling broken. I remember losing the ability to feel the spirit and feeling broken. I also remember healing from many of those moments of being broken. Or realizing I wasn’t broken. Or realizing being broken didn’t affect my value as a person.
Nearly a year ago I lost a baby, and to this day I have yet to go more than a week or two without bleeding, and sometimes that makes me feel broken. I constantly feel like a wife/mother/friend who does not have my crap together, who isn’t motivated or focused, lets my family down, and procrastinates things to an irrational and sometimes detrimental degree and I feel like a failure, broken.
But even broken, there are people we can love. Even broken, there is joy to be had. Even broken, we deserve to be loved. Even broken, we are allowed to feel sad. Even broken, we are allowed to experience success. Even broken, we are allowed to feel broken. Even broken, we can have hope. Even broken we have an unchangeable worth as children of our Heavenly Father. And having been broken, we can support the broken around us.
I used to think that feeling broken somehow made me different from other people. It added to that sense of feeling isolated and misunderstood. But as I’ve gotten older I’ve realized that I’m not the only broken one. I’m not the only one with a life story. I’m not the only one that gets sad. I’m not the only imperfect person.
The sad thing about the Addiction Recovery Program I have attended in the past, is that people don’t generally go unless they can admit to themselves that they have a problem. Which means there are a lot of people missing out! But I’ve been thinking lately that my favorite part about ARP is that everyone there is admitting that their life isn’t perfect. Everyone is admitting that they are imperfect. Being in a room full of people who can say out loud that they have made mistakes, that they are imperfect, that they feel broken... somehow makes me feel a little less broken. Because being broken is okay. And I am not alone in being broken. You hear about people’s growth and you hear about their mistakes. You see that success is possible and failure is not permanent. Sometimes you experience love from strangers and it makes love from your loved ones feel less implausible.
I wish life was more often about speaking the real truths behind our eyes and admitting that we’re all a little broken in our own way. Because maybe then it would feel a little clearer that being broken is not something that negates our potential for success, growth, or happiness in this life.. even though it sometimes feels that way when we allow that sense of isolation to overpower our perspective on our lives.
