I broke,
Shattered into a thousand little pieces.
And the world broke with me,
And around me.
Or at least so it seemed.
I remained broken for a time,
Fragments of myself lying all about,
The quiet after a great trauma.
But after a time,
And little by little,
I began to gather myself,
Scooping up the shards,
The pieces of me,
And I gathered them into a pile.
With time, and help,
I began to fit them back together,
Piece by little piece.
And in so doing,
I learned something new.
It has taken time,
And courage,
And not a little pain.
But after a while,
I came to a realization,
An understanding, of sorts.
Those pieces,
The pieces of me,
They fit together a little differently
Than they did before.
They had taken on new shapes,
New dimensions,
And some pieces, even,
Were no longer needed at all.
It has taken weeks,
Months, even,
And I’m still working on it,
But I am mostly whole again,
Mostly complete.
But I am not the same.
I look a little different now.
I have a new shape,
A new definition of self.
But I guess that only makes sense
For someone who was as broken as I.
You might not recognize me now.
You might not know me.
In fact, it’s likely.
But I know myself,
Better than I did before,
Because I have picked up
The pieces of myself,
Those jagged little shards.
I have examined each one of them,
Cut myself on them,
And learned where they go.
I have fit each one into place.
No, I do not look entirely the same,
And parts of me are still broken,
Remain to be reassembled.
But I am me,
For perhaps the first time in years.
The cracks are still there,
The gaps still showing,
Scars of my breaking
That may not ever completely go away.
But for all that
I am more whole than ever,
More complete,
And I am stronger than I have ever been.
