and hurting and letting a strange energy speak to me. I think about the community I’ve assembled on social media who really don’t know me, who I don’t really let know me. I think about the stories I choose to tell them and the ones that I don’t. I remember 2010. I spent almost the entire year lying in my bed, eyes glassy from too much Facebook: pregnant bellies; couples in love; perfect, fit, pain-free bodies. It made me miserable. Now, as I curate, collect, and cover pain with beauty to make myself feel better, I know I could be making someone else feel worse. I’ve meant every beautiful word I’ve shared with the world, but there are so many other words that I haven’t shared. I haven’t shared my pain, even though I know that pain is universal, relatable, and real. Everybody knows hurt and loss, but I’ve only shared the prettiest pictures of my life, the images and stories that hurt the least for me to look at.
* * *
At 12:45 p.m., six glasses of water, two ibuprofen, and one muffin into my day, I go to the pour-over-coffee place where I like to work and I stop hiding my pain. I tell my story, knowing that there are ugly parts, knowing that there’s pain, but also knowing that there’s dignity and power and beauty in my story. I decide to stop worrying about pushing people away with the not-so-pretty parts of life, to stop selling them short. To stop selling myself short.
I write about the accident.
“When I was a senior in high school, I was in a terrible car accident. I broke three ribs, which then punctured my lungs. As a result, they collapsed, my spleen ruptured, and I broke the top two vertebrae in my spine.…”
I write about the wire and the drugs.
“…the pain continued to get worse and worse, to the point that I needed narcotics to help me cope. I felt desperate and fearful for my life.”
I write about Jack.
“I have so much empathy for the man who’s been my husband. I can’t even imagine what it was like on his end to get married at twenty-two and to be dealt the cards we were—parents divorcing, a wife with chronic pain who dealt with it very poorly, a father-in-law’s death, the financial burden of medical bills, and a struggle with infertility.”
I tell the truth about who I am and why I’m here.
“To be where I am now is not at all what I envisioned for myself. But my life is rich and lovely. I feel tenderness and mercy surrounding me every day, and I try to hold on to it tight. I share all of this with you because I feel like my purpose is to share the story of living a beautiful and rich life in the midst of heartache and pain.”
I type like I dance: clumsily, loudly, and from the depths of me. The polite coffee shop people negotiate their too-tall biscuits that drip with bright orange egg yolk and look curiously at me. I read it over just once, while the music of dirty dishes tumbling into a rubber bin behind me plays over and over. I hit “publish” and something so heavy is lifted away from me.
The internet normally prefers short stories, but my story is not short or pretty or simple. It’s two thousand messy, honest, triumphant words that go viral. In the months that follow, I write more and take fewer pictures. I unlearn the stories I told myself about perfection and replace them with new stories about wholeness, about beauty and pain, joy and suffering. The pain that nearly killed me brings me to life. Pain becomes as much a part of my mission as beauty is.
Just like when I was a little girl, I feel beloved, the luckiest of the lucky. It’s what I’ve always wanted. The light that comes at me from the outside becomes so big and so bright that I bask in it, let myself be nurtured by it and forget about the inside of me. My pain grows louder and louder but so does my life. When life gets too loud, it becomes very hard to listen. I still have to fight for glimpses of myself.
20 Human Energy Sponge
The water in Nicaragua is stained glass. It glows phosphorescent and casts light over my broken body, which is gently held by the salty water. I smile—it looks like the ocean is filled with