Reflections on Writing: Beautifully Broken

I’ve been thinking about this post, “Beautifully Broken,” that I wrote originally four years ago, and how this fits into some writing goals I’ve got coming up. I finally went in to my old blogspot account and dug it up. This week’s post is my reflection on writing.

For a long time writer, it can be incredibly helpful to look back at past writings. It can also be helpful to share it with others. So… here you go!

Beautifully Broken

What does that even mean?

I have been broken so many times in so many ways, by so many people that I have loved and trusted.  I do not look back on the breaking and think it was beautiful.  I certainly didn’t think it was a beautiful breaking at the time.

I am patched back together broken.  In some ways I will never fully heal.  The scars are deep.  And yes, I have a horrible tendency to lash out viciously when my scars get grazed, or even glanced.

But I do not think this brokenness is beautiful.  Or anything to be proud of.  I do not bear my scars with pride.

The first time I heard this expression, “beautifully broken,” was in a song by Government Mule.  The lead singer sings in a low voice about seeing “the way she plays her man,” and that he knows he’s “got to know her name.”  He goes on, through whiskey tinted lyrics, to note that “she’s so dangerously twisted, shaped by the wind.”  He wants to know why he lies to himself, “pretend that I can break her, when she’s already been so beautifully broken.”

I Know This Woman

In an alternate reality, I am this woman.  Hurting men because she’s been so badly hurt.  Hardening to the world of love, using sex as a tool, never opening up to anyone, feeling dark and alone and, yes, dangerous.  I was well on my way there when I met Carlos.  She haunts me.

In one of our few intense fights, which means I used words like knives to cut at my husband, Carlos asked me, calmly, incredulously, “why do you hate men so much?  Who hurt you so bad?”  Hmmm… Where do I begin?

But no, that is not where I want to go here.  The point is that in those moments, there are always two Shannas.  There is the one that says, “fuck off,” walks out of the room, the house, gets into the car, finds a bar, finds a new guy, finds a way to close off, close down, shut out.

And there is the Shanna that asks herself what makes someone think that about me, especially someone who knows me so well, and knows that I love him.

Do I hate men?

No.

But that other Shanna surely does.

And I have to acknowledge the path not taken.  I have to recognize that there are myriad choices I made and did not make that got me here, to this point, a healthier place emotionally and psychologically, but that the perpetually broken path is the slippery one I can always slip back onto.

It is not beautiful.  It is dark.  It is lonely.  It is constantly painful.  It is a path I nod at when it beckons me, and I look at my husband, I look at my darling daughter, who has no reason to hate men, and I look in the mirror.  I do not want to be Miss Havisham.

I get that men find that unavailability attractive, in the same way so many women drool over the “bad boy” who always hurts them because they too are closed off and empty inside from selling away their souls piece by broken piece.  Darkness is tempting, it is alluring, it beckons.

What I do not understand is women want to be known as beautifully broken.

I googled the term after a coworker yesterday told me that her sister has a tattoo across her lower back that bears that insignia, “beautifully broken.”

Beautifully Broken

First of all, I do not think you are supposed to refer to yourself that way.  I think it only works when someone else uses it to describe you.

Second of all, apparently Ashlee Simpson, the incredibly vapid pop singer has a song with the same title.  So, scratch my first of all; I guess it is okay now to refer to yourself that way.

What is the appeal then?  I am broken, but I am beautiful, please fix me?  Or I am so broken that I am beautiful, please fix me?  Or better yet, I am broken in such a beautiful way; oh yea, and please fix me?

Or use me?  Or break me some more?

For me, it connects quite cleanly with the Marilyn Monroe quote women are so fond of adopting:

“I’m selfish, impatient, and a little insecure.  I make mistakes, I am out of control, and at times hard to handle.  But if you can’t handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don’t deserve me at my best.”

Asshole

Marilyn Monroe was an asshole.  She could not stay in a relationship.  She slept with the president of the United States, and his brother, behind their wives backs.  She was selfish, needy, thoughtless, and moronic.  And hot.  Ergo beautifully broken?

There is a great blog about this mentality on Huffpost that I read months ago.  It really struck home.  The basic point:  If I can’t handle you at your worst then maybe you should stop being so horrible.

Being broken is not a license to be an asshole.  My past hurts do not give me the right to go around hurting everyone else.  Intentionally!

When I hurt my husband through my own pain, when I nip and bite at him because of my own twisted psyche, I do not say, or even think, “yea, well, deal with it.  You’re lucky to have me.”

Who’s Lucky?

I apologize.  I am ashamed.  And I hope one day that I don’t push him too far.  Right out of my life.  So I work on healing, on making better choices, on (wait for it) thinking before I speak or act.

How about this:  break the cycle.  Do not aim to scratch and bleed out the same scars on someone else that have been etched into the timeline of your skin.

To be clear.  I am proud that I survived.  I am not ashamed of my scars.  But I do not claim to be beautifully broken.  There is no dignity in that calling card.  Marilyn was wounded.  Open, bleeding, weeping, seeping, wounded.  She killed herself.  She was a living, breathing, dying, tragedy.

I want to be a success story.  I want to continue to heal.

I want the other Shanna to move further and further away, for our paths to diverge so widely that mountains and rivers would have to be traversed for me to become her again.

No, don’t call me beautifully broken.  That woman moves “from star to star.”  She “casts her spell.  It’s like drowning in moonlight…”

Instead, call me hauntingly healed.