Shattered & Whole

When I was seventeen, I felt the weight of self-blame and anger with no recourse but to hurt myself. I remember looking in the mirror in my bathroom, seeing a face stare back at me that I despised. The surging emotion bringing blood to my face and tears to my eyes, I clenched my fist and punched that mirror with all I had.

My fist made a large indentation in the bathroom vanity cabinet. The impact made a dent with shards of glass radiating out from it some fell to the floor, some remained attached to the cabinet, hanging at odd angles. Still, I looked at the image, now shattered, in pieces, broken.

My hand was bloody, but in a strange way, it felt good.

That was forty five years ago. It has taken forty five years for me to gather up all the shards and broken pieces, one by one, breaking my psychic skin with many of them. It has taken me forty five years to assemble them back into a flat reflective surface. In the process the image in the mirror was never complete. Until recently, I could not get a full glance at the man in the mirror.

I do not look back to that day forty five years ago and wish it had been different. I do not blame anymore, I don't feel blame-worthy anymore. When those shards of my face fell to the floor, when my blood dripped to the floor, when I was cut again and again by picking up the pieces, I was unknowingly nourished for the journey to this moment.

This life is a process. The process is continuing to move while not knowing the rules. The process teaches us the rules, and that's the point.

I had to shatter - to die - so that I could become my self. Now, enough of the mirror-puzzle has been reassembled that I can see the full refection. My face is lined with breaks and cracks, marked by age and the effort of gathering what was shattered and placing the pieces in order by my own intention and vision.

Blame has become gratitude. Anger has become joy. Hatred has become compassion. Then, at seventeen, indifferent to my life, now I love, I am loving, I am lovable.