Fractured - Damaged - Broken

I always knew that I was different. As a small child I was highly emotional and as I moved into my teenage years I often spent time locked inside my head, wondering what was wrong with me to make me feel and act the way that I did. For most of my young life I looked somewhat normal from the outside - but as much as I tried to fit in and hide them, the signs were already beginning to shine through.

As I developed into a young adult - having made several poor choices already throughout my life, I began to feel more than different; I felt broken and damaged. It wasn't a simple thought that passed through my mind one day though. No, it was the way that I truly began to see myself as my poor decisions, the unstable moods, the emotional dysregulation, and the lack of control concerning my actions continued to get worse. It was a difficult and confusing place to be in - I was young and although I was quite intelligent - the thoughts in my head rarely made sense, and nothing ever seemed to click into place easily for me. For years I wrestled with the thoughts in my head and with this feeling of being fractured, a million pieces of me that never fit together the way that they should. 

By the time I was given any diagnosis at all, I was a mess. I felt completely shattered and simply wrong... I knew I would never fit in, and I didn't know how to be normal - though I tried desperately to appear like everyone else. As the second and third diagnoses came in, I finally felt that maybe something made sense in my world for a change - maybe I hadn't been broken at some point and maybe there were just a few light cracks that needed to be glued together with meds and therapy. And so I continued to struggle on... oftentimes wanting to give up altogether. And then, just as I would become as stable as I knew how to be, something would always seem to happen that would completely smash me into tiny pieces again. There were times where it was a fairly big and traumatic event - and there were times when it was something small, a tiny change that would cause my shakey foundation to collapse and I would be left in a heap of small and jagged shards... needing to be glued together yet again.

In recent years I've learned a lot about myself. I've learned that sometimes I really do feel broken - just like everyone else, and that's alright. Sometimes, it's alright to need that glue to help me stick together, whether it's medications, or therapy, or just a support system around me. I've learned that feeling broken doesn't mean I am damaged or useless or unworthy... that sometimes the most beautiful designs come from the cracks we've had to repair. I've learned that I don't have to fix it on my own - I have my family, my friends, my faith, and my support system in place - and sometimes it's okay to know that you need a stitch to hold you together for a time. I've learned that no matter how broken I have felt in the past - it is always worth fixing it, and every time I work on myself... I get a little stronger, a little more resistent to those things that used to shatter me. I've learned that despite my earlier years and the hardest days of my struggle, that I've been able to not only survive, but begin to thrive - I've been able to grow and change and live. I've learned that no matter how many pieces there once were, that I can be whole and full and complete... and that there is always hope, there's always a way to be put back together again.