fracture

A friend of mine described trauma as a fracture in the self.
See, she believes in love, in forgiveness, in healing, in trust.
But, see, that terrible event cleaved a part of her off and left it in the past.
Even as she believes in love, she fears.
Even as she believes in forgiveness, she angers.
Even as she believes in trust, she distrusts.

I am not so different.
Even as I tried to love you, I hated you.
Even as I tried to trust you, I resented you.
Even as I tried to accept you, I was angry with you.
How could I hate you but want you in my life at the same time?

This fracture in my self is as familiar to me as the pale oval of my face in the mirror every morning.
I loved you, cared for you, admired you, and liked you.
I hated you, resented you, felt so hurt by you, and felt so bitter towards you.
I lay these two truths before any of you,
and I ask:
which is the lie?
Let me put it another way:
how can they both be true?

I never understood this fracture.
I looked in the mirror,
and when I saw those cracks and tremors and splits,
I thought:
I am Frankenstein’s monster.
There is something irreparably and irrevocably wrong with me.

I tried to hide the scars.
I tried to be better, more, kinder, purer.
I tried to distill myself into only the untouched, uncomplicated parts.
And when people told me how kind I was
(my performance worked),
I only felt the rift between myself and the rest of the (perfect) world widen.
They look at me and see a human.
Whole, good, deserving.
I look at myself and see a monster.
Fractured, lesser, ugly.

With you, towards you,
the monster in my heart howled and howled and sobbed and wept.
It wanted revenge.
It wanted love.

I fought against the monster within me for years.
How tired I am.
How strange everything looks now.
When you have a sword,
everything looks like an enemy.
I wept with the monster as I hauled it back from you.
I howled with the monster as I stabbed it.
I raged with the monster as I tried, again and again, to kill it.
How strange that I slowly wither away alongside the monster.

The scars that marked me have another source:
a mind riddled with rot.
I knew
from a young age
that the fear and terror I feel
was too frequent to be normal.
The sick churning of my stomach,
the dread and panic,
the frequent utter black and icy terror,
none of it was normal.

I look at everyone around me.
The smallest things do not set them into a tailspin of fear.
They are laughing and joking,
normal,
when I feel like someone just told me:
you have been selected for a public execution.
Nearly everything sounds like a death sentence to me.
It would be funny if it were not so miserable.

So I learned too:
laugh, joke, put on a mask;
hide the terror, hide the dread, hide the fear.
Pretend, playact, perform
like you are an actor in a play.
You need to do more work than everyone else
because there is something wrong with you.
And you know what this means –
there is only one thing I can be –
I know what I am –
a coward.

I understood the chasm between myself
and everyone else
very well
from a young age.
They are human.
I am not.
I am ugly and cowardly and shameful with a monstrous face.

I hate that monster within me.
It is everything that is wrong with me.
Never let them see how monstrous you are.

I learned to protect myself the only way I knew:
silence and gates.
It was the only way I felt safe.

I built gate after gate after gate
and the real me
is at the heart
of this concentric collection of locks.
Most people stand at the millionth gate from the heart
and I show them only what I want them to see,
like showing them the photos that have my best angle.
Some people have gotten so close to me,
I can see them from where I am
locked away in the heart of everything.

I am tired.
I wish for someone to say to me:
you have fought well, little soldier.
You went above and beyond the call of duty,
you were valiant and brave, little lion-heart.
You deserve a medal.

I learnt fragmentation at a young age.
Instead of my shadow and I, forming a whole person,
it is the monster within me and I.
Give the “I” a medal and the monster is pushed back even further into the darkness.
Wrong.
It is all wrong.
The monster is me. I am the monster.
The “I” is me. I am “I”.

Someone asked me once:
what was the worst period of your life?
And I replied:
now, college, high school, elementary school. 
And they said:
so, the last ten years of your life?

When you spend as many years as I have
ruthlessly hacking away all the ugly parts,
painfully aware of every ugly fracture that no one must ever lay eyes upon,
fighting an unending war with the monster,
it becomes all you know of yourself, you know?
If you only feel happy,
you think,
I am a happy person.
If you only feel shame,
you think,
I am a miserable, cowardly, ugly person.

I spent so many years fearing myself.
What other ugly scars are hiding away?
What other shame have I not discovered about myself?

I do not really want to know.
I put all my energy into running away from myself even as I try to force myself into a better shape.
It is bad enough that I have a monster and mind-rots.
I do not think I can endure witnessing more proof of my fundamental ugliness.
It is heartbreaking enough that I am made so wrong.
I do not think I can stand seeing the abyss between myself and everyone else deepen.

How startling then
to realize that
I have already
seen the worst of me
and it is only human.

How startling then
to realize that
I have lived through
most of my worst fears.

How startling then
to realize that
my ugliest shame
is merely my softest vulnerability.

How startling then
to realize that
my misery was unchosen
and it is the site
of my greatest strength
in the time
of my greatest hardship and strife.

I cannot demonize myself anymore.
I cannot fracture myself anymore.
I cannot war with myself anymore.
If I am to survive,
let it be said:
I am only human
and I am enough.

I am a person with a shadow.
Only, my shadow looks like a monster
and maybe that is not a condemnation.