What "Broke" Me?

 

Tonight, a dear friend of mine asked me; “What broke you?”, and I really couldn’t give her a simple direct answer. It’s not like I experienced one single heartbreaking event, but more a series of events spread across my life that has caused me to be much more reserved most of the time. I didn’t take her question as anything but the caring concern that wanted to know what had changed me from what little she knew of my past.

I have been thinking about her question since before I came home, and I still cannot come up with one, single experience that was so crushing as to change my personality. Making me seem harder, and colder, and much more reserved. As I look back over my life, I can see a pattern of trying to do the “right thing”, and to be an honorable man. Yet, as I look back, I can see that doing so resulted in my downfall. Even if it may not have had that effect for several years. The deaths of; many close friends, two wives, a daughter, the loss of a son (who I can only hope is still alive), and other bizarre occurrences in my life that I refuse to put on the record have made me who I am now.

Part of the problem is my knowledge of how history has shown me what can happen when I do let go and allow myself to not hold back. Giving myself over and not holding myself back has repeatedly ended in devastating heartbreak. At the same time, holding back and not allowing others into my heart has also created situations where what could have been something special merely turned into a few fleeting moments of promise that seemed to whither away.

There are things that I have done that are between God and I alone. He is my judge, and no one else need ever know the depths of darkness I have known in my past. The fear of letting someone in deeply enough to allow them to learn those secrets no doubt holds some conditional relationship to how my personality has changed over the years. People have told me how strong and stoic I seem to be emotionally. Trying to live up to my personal code, has meant that is how I often must be.

That is why I cherish those times when I can relax and be seemingly carefree and content. It seems that during those times I can push the darkness I have experienced deeper down inside, and hold it more securely, much more tightly compartmentalized within me under heavy security. The people I trusted enough to share the dark experiences and their effects have all moved on to whatever lay beyond this life. So, in many ways I find myself always alone, even when I am with a cohort of my closest friends. Loneliness, doubt and guilt are things I have long since learned to deal with on a daily basis.

Thinking about it now, I still can’t answer “what broke you?” Not even fully to myself, because to do so is rubbing salt into old wounds that have never fully healed. I can’t even fully agree that I am broken. Bent and battered, yes. Broken; maybe, maybe not. I really don’t know. And if I don’t even know that, how I can I say what really “broke” me?