A photo posted by Elyane S Youssef (@elyaneyoussef) on Sep 17, 2016 at 2:36am PDT

“Maybe we feel empty because we leave pieces of ourselves in everything we used to love.” ~ R.M Drake 

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I was broken-hearted.

We’ve all been, at least once, broken-hearted. However, I’ve experienced a heartbreak that changed the trajectory of my whole life.

That heartbreak engraved fear within me. I was scared I’d never come back as the person I was before having my heart broken. I feared the inability to love again—to love myself, and especially another person.

I was terrified of the person I might become, and mostly, I feared the unbearable healing process, because I knew I wasn’t going to be easily healed.

I realized my past destructive relationship wasn’t a mere bad dream that would vanish in the morning. The relationship ended, but the aftermath was only beginning—and so, I was terrified.

My fractured pieces terrified me. I hated them. I didn’t like that incomplete image of myself. It felt as though a major part of me had been left somewhere impossible to reach. I mourned my old, whole self like a mother mourning her deceased child.

They say time heals all wounds, and I agree to a certain extent—time is indeed a miraculous thing, for without it, nothing would progress.

However, time didn’t heal my wounds…but, time has helped me accept them.

It took me a while to realize that I was never going to be my old self again. The person I was before being heartbroken was long gone. She’s only an illusionary image that I kept reviving in my own head from time to time. I longed for her, but she never longed for me—because she doesn’t exist anymore.

Nonetheless, she was an essential part of the journey, because I wouldn’t have transformed to who I am today without her.

With time, I’ve even realized that I don’t want to be her again. Her “completeness” was only weakness in disguise.

I also feared the healing process was also an illusion. My healing might never take place—it only transcends. My pain is merging with my happiness, and together, they are creating an astounding state of being.

And so, I’ve transformed from heart-broken to beautifully broken.

I love myself now more than I ever did my entire life (if I ever truly loved myself before). Love starts with acceptance. And only when I accepted myself as I am—broken and all—have I truly started protecting and loving myself.

I suddenly found completeness in my incomplete image. I accepted my broken pieces, scattered as they are, and I’m not opting to pick them up.

I’m aware that I might never find that missing part of me again. It was lost for a good reason, and I’m trying to decipher that reason.

That empty space within me is meant to stay empty, and it’s beautiful. I am that space, I am that emptiness, I am that beauty.

This incompleteness translates my dismal memories, my bittersweet past and my endurance—and I don’t want it to be taken away from me. It has transformed from an irrational fear to a strong part of my identity, and I’m damn proud of it.

My broken pieces are the testimony of my delicacy and the evidence of my resilience.

I see them dispersed around me, and I want to dance on them barefoot. I want to hold them close to my heart, throw them up in the air and feel them descending on me like heavy drops of rain.

I only hope that whoever falls in love with me will also fall in love with my broken pieces.

I am a beautifully broken woman—I am Kintsukuroi. (The Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold.)

 

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Author: Elyane Youssef

Image: Author’s own

Editor: Yoli Ramazzina