In the Arena

[kathymac]

The truth is...I feel broken by romantic love.

That's the best way I know how to say it. It's also not correct. I don't feel broken by love - I feel healed by it. I feel able to embrace my brokenness and work on fixing it. Love is what brings me here, much more than whatever breaks I feel. And I'm not broken by romance. I'm not really aware of it, to be honest. I don't know for sure what it looks like, or if I've ever seen it. I think I have. Glimpses of it, here and there.

I can't say that I've been broken by men, either. So many of my experiences, so many of my relationships, are littered with beautiful shreds of light brought into them by the men involved.

But.

I feel broken.

And something about those experiences, about those relationships, is at the core of it. Something about the things that have brought light into my life has done just the opposite - something in them has put cracks in my confidence, and pain in my heart.

I can't really explain the pain, or the breakage. I don't know how to describe in logical words what I feel. I can only say it with some kind of poetry - whatever meager poetry I can muster in this brain of mine.

I feel angry and hurt. I want to cry or lash out. I want to scream on the rooftops. I want to open myself and allow myself to be eviscerated by it.

I'm tired of patching it up. I'm tired of building walls around it. I'm tired of putting on a happy face and some armor and going about the day searching for the happiness that I know is there if I just try hard enough.

I really do know it's there. Don't misunderstand.

But I'm exhausted from searching for it. I'm used to it making itself known. But this thing - this hurt - this brokenness - is too big right now. It's standing in the way.

And I'm standing on my toes, craning my neck, jumping up and down to see around it.

What I want is to stop looking around it and start looking at it. Stare it down and challenge it. Say "what do you want? Why are you here? How can I make you go away?"

And then do whatever I have to do to make it go away.

I read a beautiful "advice column" to a man with a disability who looks, as he puts it, like a "beast". He says that it's made him incapable of being loved. He is wrong. But there's no question that he faces a challenge. It will never be easy for him.

I read it, and thought, "I identify with this."

And suddenly, I was facing the hurt. I was looking at it.

And I was mad.

I am not a beast. I am not disabled. I am not ugly.

I know that I am not everyone's ideal. I know that there are things about me that people don't find attractive. That is okay.

But.

Besides those things. Despite those things. I am beautiful. I am attractive. I am a catch.

There is no reason for me to identify with the letter.

But I did.

I've had a similar life experience. I've felt the emptiness of knowing I am loved fiercely by men who have no desire to be intimate with me. I've felt the falling from a mountain that is thinking something is starting only to find that he never climbed the mountain in the first place.

I've been alone and untouched.

And much of the time, I'm grateful even for the pain of that aloneness. I'm grateful for my independence and grateful that I've been saved the heartbreak of breaking apart from something that I didn't know wasn't right.

But right now, I don't feel grateful.

I feel broken.

I feel like there are things I don't know how to do. I feel like I've come to expect things that others have never even fathomed. I feel like I'm not beautiful or a catch.

I feel like a beast.

And I'm angry. And I'm sad. And I want to do something about it, but I don't know what.

I can't talk about it. I've made it almost impossible to have those conversations with the people I trust most by hoping that maybe they would be the exception that excuses the rule. I had tried to say "these things have happened, but they are not who I am." I tried to say "I am not broken, no matter how I feel." And despite my valiant effort, I didn't succeed.

So here I am in the arena. I've fought this thing hard, and it's fought back just as much. It's gotten harder.

I'm alone here in this arena, despite that fierce love. I'm alone against this brokenness.

Is there anyone who can help me win this fight?

I'm not sure.

But I'm here. I'm not jumping and craning and peeking around this thing. I'm in the ring with it. Life has made it necessary.

I guess the only way to overcome it is to fight it. I guess the only way to heal is to really feel the brokenness, instead of denying it.

For now, it takes all of my courage just to stand in this ring.

But I'm doing it.