“Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.” — Kahlil Gabran

A shrink told me five or six years ago that I had to rebuild my center.

I had no idea what he meant, but he explained that children who are traumatized or abused often have a shattered ego and fractured center, those injuries can never be erased, but it is possible to slowly and painstakingly rebuild the center. I was slow to grasp that he was speaking of me.

There are wounds inside of you that never show on the body that are deeper and more painful than any sharp knife, he said. You’re all cut up inside.

I’ll make a prophecy, he said, I’ve been doing this a long time. You will rebuilt your center and get your life back. I am sure of it.

So I said goodbye to him, and set off on my hero journey. Come back whole or not at all.

That was my task, he told me in a soft but serious voice, to begin re- building my battered self, to build a center that would enable me to find love, to shed fear and helplessness, to patch up my ego and recover my true identity, or barring that, a good and true one. It was all in there, he said.  You just have to put the puzzle pieces together.

Many troubled children cling to the hope that growing up will bring healing and escape. Not so fast, he said.

I believed him, it sounded right,  and got to work. But like any hero journey, I had to leave the known for the unknown, and embrace the great journey of discovery.

That is what I fled my family and life in the suburbs and everything familiar to do:

To come to the unknown, to the  country, to live in nature, to heal myself, to find my companion.

It can only be done, I was told, in a slow and painful and even  dull way. The pieces have to be put back together.

Think of pick-up sticks, he said, you start at the bottom, one stick and a time, and you keep on building up. it is not a glamorous or heroic task, he said, it is tedious and slow.

Chronic child abuse arrests the course of normal development by its continuous infusion of terror and helplessness into the survivor’s life. Trauma is a penetrating wound and injury, say the shrinks, which threatens life. Identity is fragile or crushed,  and a reliable sense of strength and independence is ruptured. Some people never get that back.

You were traumatized, he said,  your center, your sense of self, your ego, is all in pieces. You have to find a way back. A sobering kind of pep talk, no cheers and whacks on the back.

I liked what he said, it was sobering but also gave me hope. I’m a willful person, and what I lack in brains and common sense I have in determination and focus. Once on a path, I am rarely deterred. We cannot all be victims. I am responsible for me.

I learned to talk about my feelings, they gradually became less frightening, less overwhelming. I learned that I was not alone, and I learned to stop berating myself and apologizing for myself. I learned to dream about how I wished to life. I learned to pursue my dreams. I gave up wishing the past had been different, and started feeling grateful for my future.

I learned to stop speaking poorly of my life, or of taxes, or the price of things, or the evils of the  left, and the evils of the right. I learned to stop blaming other people for my life, and I learned to live in the present not the past. The future was my dream, not my destiny.

I learned to shed secrets like a dog sheds fleas, and open up my guarded and closed life. I learned to be free of the suffocations of other people. I learned to tell myself what to do, not to let other people tell me what to do. And that, I can tell you from the heart, is something you have to fight for every day of your life. I learned to stand in my truth, not in the lies of others.

I found my moral compass, I learned to respect myself.

I learned to live a creative life, and to never surrender it to fear and hesitation. I learned to not live a hollow life, or a substitute life, or a life built on other people’s expensive ideas about safety and security. I learned to be a refugee in the Corporate Nation, to work for myself and by myself.

I learned to respect life, and not bemoan it. I learned to celebrate life, not mourn death. I learned to see the worst parts of myself and admit to them.  A great weight was lifted from me. I learned to do good, and not to argue about who is good. And slowly but surely the shrink’s prophecies started to come true.

I learned to love myself, so that someone else might love me.

I have a center now, it is all scarred and scratched, but it is solid.  I patched up my identity. I learned to heal and soothe the penetrating injury, it is just a dull throb now. I do not give pieces of myself away any longer, nor do I live in fear and uncertainty. I learned to take responsibility for my own life.

My center is my soul and my guide, my moral compass and my voice, my identity and my clarity.

Above all, I tell myself, take a chance.

Sing, like blood rushing from a broken heart.