Incomplete

When you look at me, am I incomplete?
Am I missing something everybody else can clearly see?
when you look at me...
- Sarah Bettens, Grey

Much of my therapy lately has centered around my ever growing awareness of being incomplete.

For many, many years I thought that people looking at my life would be envious. A have a very satisfying career, a long term relationship with a woman who loves me, two beautiful and accomplished daughters, a warm and loving home, great friends. I have it all.

Yet I have always known, somewhere deep down, that this is a house of cards - a very shaky structure that remains upright only by balance and friction. And once things are out of balance, the whole thing collapses.


It was with this knowledge that I put myself back in therapy. I wanted my life to be built on a better foundation, one that could not be easily knocked down by one rape trigger, one insensitive comment, one memory, or any other external incident that would often throw me back into that hole or have debilitating effects on those who care most about me.

Using this analogy, my therapist assured me that we would take apart the structure and rebuild it, stronger and healthier. She did not give me any false illusions that it would be easy or without hazards. She told me we would have to break it all apart, painfully, look at each card, every memory, every response, determine whether it was worth keeping or can and should be discarded. Ugly and scarred cards that could not be discarded would have to find a way to fit in better, supported by beautiful and healthy cards. And when it was all back together, my life would be stronger and better able to withstand the assault of outside influences and my own destructive patterns.

I am now in the midst of the hardest therapy stuff I have ever encountered. Partly because my house, my self, all those parts that I have always clung to, have been scattered to the wind and I am desperately running around trying to pick them up (still wanting to cling to things even though I know some of them to be unhealthy). But mostly what is hard is the realization that things have been stolen from me that are necessary for a truly healthy foundation. Gone forever. Things I can’t even name, but I know they are missing. And no matter how many times I tear it down and try to build it back up, I will always be missing pieces that are essential.

I do not mean for this to be a morose post. It is not my mood or my intention at all. It is just me, grappling with a new revelation, a clearer understanding of my brokenness. For many, many years I have tried to convince myself that I was whole again. Now I see that I will never can or will be. And I am trying to come to terms with what that means for me.

When you look at me, am I incomplete?
Am I missing something everybody else can clearly see?
when you look at me...