[Bridger]

I have something to share.
Not quite sure where.

I have asked myself in my life what it means to break. I have felt close to it, at some points. I have felt stress, and pressure, and forces seeking to make me submit, I have taken on responsibilities more than I could handle, and have experienced hurt and harm and been scarred by life.

But that is life. I'm not complaining.

I think all of us feel like that, at some point. Like Atlas, being overwhelmed by the weight of the Earth on ones shoulder.

But I think few people actually get to the point where they do break. We find ways to avoid it. We change a situation, we withdraw, we strike back, we change.

So, the question to me remained. What does it mean to break. What happens when too much is too much and one does shatter.

I've experienced it. About... a month ago, now, I think. And it is turning out to be an experience of incredible value to me. It's changing me. I think it is changing me in ways that are good. The value of it is somewhere up there with my near death experience, seeing my life flash by my eyes, and being shown every mistake I have ever made. Mistake after mistake after mistake. That was all I was shown, and all of those mistakes based on fear.

I came out of that fearless. For a time I could not experience fear at all. I reached a new equilibrium eventually, but that experience was still profoundly changing.

And now, this.

Shattering.

So, what is it? What happens when one breaks?

I like astronomy. Bare with me here.

The birth of a star is a violent process. Gases condense and under the weight they crush into a swirling disk. Particles collide and bounce off each other or stick. Out of dust rocks are born and out of rocks mountains and out of mountains planets. Swirling around the center of it all, swirling in darkness, in coldness, around a deep dark weight. The star to be.
That weight at the core is the pain inside. The center the star not yet born.

When it reaches critical mass, it ignites. To shatter is that. Let there be light,, and there was light, and everything in that maelstrom of heat and light is swept aside. Everything but the heaviest rocks. A shroud of dust and particles is lifted, banished, pushed far away, and what is left is left bare and exposed, and burning under the glare of pain.

It makes sense in my head. I like to think in images.

All defenses I had built up over the experiences of my life were swept away. As you child you play on a playground and a girl throws sand in your face and laughs, and you think, girls are mean. That is a defense. You expect it, so it doesn't hurt you anymore. And we all built these defenses, and some of them incredibly sophisticated and intricate as what we deal with in life becomes more complex. Some that take us out of the now, or take us out of the here, or take us out of ourselves. We withdraw, we detach, we disassociate, we believe. There are so many different types of ways we learn in life to shield our core with.

All of that was gone. I was reduced to the state of a newborn. For the first time in my life I felt submissive. For the first time I can remember, anyways. I wanted to reach out with my hand and ask someone to help me. Lead me. Show me a way out of this. I don't know what to do. And in the center of it, larger than life itself, burning brightly, the pain that swept it all aside to begin with.

I didn't reach that place, there are deeper places to fall to than I did. A shattering harder still, but I can now understand what makes a wounded man cry out for his mother.

I felt, fully. The world was clearer, and all of its effects on me more profound. Everything got close to me. There was nothing I could dismiss. The pain of others an unbearable addition to my own pain.

I felt, fully. I cried myself to sleep and cried myself awake. I loved and grieved the loss I felt.

And then, the shards started coming back together. The star burned off its fuel dimmed and the veil returned, but, different. Through my experience I was altered. And I am still in the process of being altered. I find myself returning to a place I once knew before grief became a part of my life.

What I let out after being shattered, it was more than just the loss of one person. There was pain in there that was old. Ancient, even.

Naked, on grass, bathed in sunlight I sat, my arms extended towards the sun in mediation, I felt part of the universe and connected to all things around me. Everything mattered, everything had meaning, and everything posed a question.

Why.

I find myself returning to that. Too my teenage self. And I am really happy about it.

[me@theattic]

Thanks for sharing this I wished I could find myself to retuning to me again.

[lynn P.]

That was very profound writing and deep thoughts. Does this mean you're not a sexual sadist anymore? I can relate to being that low and in deep crisis but I'm still bitter some what.

[Bridger]

I wasn't feeling sexual while I was that low, that is for sure. But when I came back to myself my orientation certainly hasn't changed.

You're still bitter, and I'm still wounded. I still find myself crying when the topic of kids comes up. I can still get triggered. But it is not this gaping wound, anymore. It's not something that I feel on me all the time. It's going to heal, in time, too. I'm pretty sure.

And thank you.

[Lilleth]

Don't know what you went through to make you experience what you wrote about. But that sounds like a passage from a Science Fiction book. I wish I could find some way that would help me.