Journey, Part 2 in Phoenix

“No one knows my journey. No one single person has the whole picture. No one but me. Many, many people have little pieces, some more than others. But none of them have the whole. So none of them, no one on earth, knows truly who I am, how far I’ve come, and how far I still have to travel.

I have the whole picture, the whole journey, but it’s fractured. I can see all the cracks, the flaws. I can see what has been repaired, like kintsugi art - the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold? I can see some of my cracks filled in, repaired. Those cracks are so beautiful to me, make me so proud of how hard I worked to mend them. I can see what’s been repaired, but also how much is still fractured, empty. Raw, jagged edges, sharp edges that cut deep.

I feel like I’ll never be able to repair them all because new ones keep forming. Every time I feel like I’ve filled in another crack, answered another question about myself, and learned how to heal the damage, something seems to come along and sneak a new fracture in. And that’s why I never let any one person see all of the pieces because, sometimes, when you let someone in that deep, they…

Everyone leaves. Everyone, always, one way or another, they all leave. Why keep inviting them in if they’ll only leave more damage than they found when they inevitably choose to leave?

I just wish I could show someone all of the cracks and have them want to help me fill them in with love and light and peace and acceptance. All I’ve ever wanted was to be loved just as I am: a work in progress.”

Yeah, I just quoted myself. Is that weird? Probably. This entry was originally written on March 30, just over 5 weeks ago.

Five. Weeks.

I feel like I’ve found that someone. The one who can see all my fractures, all my broken pieces, and who fills in the blank spaces, the missing pieces, and every broken part of me with exactly what I wished for, with love, light, peace, and acceptance. He is the missing pieces and he fills in all the other empty spaces, too.

He makes me feel loved just as I am. But, even more than that, he loves me for all that I was, all that I could be, all that I will be.

At least… that’s how it feels to me, anyway.

Part of my journey involves reprogramming my brain so it’s compatible with the new operating system. The new operating system involves a lot of self-love and tearing down old, crumbling walls that I thought I needed to protect myself when really all they did was isolate me, restrict me, prevent me from being my full, true, genuine self. Those walls have hindered my ability not only for accepting love from others, but also for self-love.

I built them to keep love out, after all.

All I’ve ever known is that love hurts, that it’s a lie people tell, a weapon they use to control me. My brain is set to automatically reject love because of everything that always came with it. I have to work on this thing, find the bad code, and eliminate it.

The good news is that at least I’m aware of the problem, aware of the reasons for the emotional reactions I’m having, this sense of panic and fear. And now I have this new understanding of Meat Man when he told me that love is a trigger for him. Oh look, it’s a trigger for me, too. Identifying the trigger is the first step to recovery.

Now I just have to figure out how to actually recover, how to control my automatic emotional responses. Luckily, I have someone in my life who is a walking, talking, living, breathing epiphany generator. He has magic, you guys. Voodoo.

Or maybe he just loves me.

Huh.

Last updated May 05, 2019