I’m Not Okay

Let me ask you a question… have you ever had your heart broken?

I have.

I’ve suffered that crushing pain that’s literally in the centre of your chest, the difficulty drawing in a deep breath; the ache leaching out from that one central spot invading blood vessels, muscle, and bone. The suffering so deep you can’t move, yet stillness doesn’t bring any relief. The hurt surrounding your entire being waiting for you to find a way to break through it.

I’ve saturated pillow cases, and the pillows themselves. I’ve decimated many tissue boxes violently yanking their tissue contents one by one.

I’ve felt the feelings, the despair, the sadness, but not once did I think I wouldn’t survive.
On some level I knew that a broken heart wouldn’t be the end of me, yes, it could bring me to my knees, but it wouldn’t end me.
Hell, songs, poems, even novels are written about surviving a broken heart, so for the most part it is do-able, it’s part of being human, one of the risks we agree to in our need for connection and we get through it, right.

Now let me ask another question… have you ever had your soul broken?

I’ll quietly whisper here because it’s still quite fragile.

I have.

Quite a statement for an atheist, right!

And I can’t tell you if it’s recoverable completely, because I truly don’t know.
I do know I’m a work in progress, and I know without a shadow of a doubt that I am forever changed.

As far back as I can remember I’ve had this imaginary picture of the soul as a small semi translucent ball that radiates a gentle diffuse white light, about the size of a ping pong ball. Its form is not quite physical, not quite palpable but almost, kind of floaty, super soft and wispy.

Let me write the words to paint the picture of my soul in the lead up to it breaking.

Early 2021 mine developed a split on it’s surface.
Looking back I felt it when it first occurred, I truly did but not physically per se. Here’s where it gets hard to explain. It was a visceral reaction like my emotional core couldn’t catch it’s breath for a little bit, similar to yet different to when you get the wind knocked out of you, everything just felt off, like a deep internal shift had occurred.
Instinctively I knew nothing good was happening.
And true to form, I completely ignored it!

To my way of thinking heart break is caused from that which is outside of your physical being. External things, people, or situations, push on it, pull at it, crush it even, all applying some sort of force from outside influences. Sadness and pain then wash over it, weigh down on it, this creates that heaviness, that aching feeling.

A soul however breaks from the inside. Our internal dialogue, thoughts, emotions, perceptions of our worth, how we value ourselves in the various worlds we inhabit, the very essence of who we are and what we represent, they’re all packaged up to make the contents of the soul.

Without being consciously aware of it, the internal pressure within mine built up very quietly and slowly over the past few years, intensifying dramatically over the previous three years especially (2018-21).
Traumas that changed how I thought of myself and experiences I went through lay upon each other, building and increasing that internal pressure. I just lived my life, ignoring my deep thoughts and the even deeper feelings that kept trying to surface.

I didn’t have time for this. I soldiered on and thought I was being strong, I became stoic.
Meanwhile I felt I was invisible, I felt I didn’t have value, and I truly believed I was not worthy, not worthy of anything, empathy, love, friendship, joy, time.

Rough, huh.

Now picture my soul, a small translucent floaty ethereal ball, diffuse white light gently radiating, with a split in it caused by its bulging contents. The contents not quite spilling out but bulging and protruding ominously, all the while held tenuously together in the middle of the split by a thin diaphanous strip reaching across that divide from one side to the other, trying it’s hardest to keep the two sides from separating further and keeping everything contained within. That small strip was all that was keeping this wound from opening up, gaping wide, and spilling. That’s all that held my soul, my spiritual, emotional, essence of all that I am, together.

Now, you may not know this about me but I love watching dance videos, you know the short ones - Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, Stories, Tik Tok, you get my drift, right. One night I was going down a rabbit hole of Reels on Instagram. I had just started exploring this group of men who kept coming up as ‘Recommended Reels, or Suggested Reels’ and clips of them dancing either solo or as a group. I noticed the suggestions were the same men consistently. And I noticed I’d stop scrolling and pause to watch their moves, their dances, and then scroll on until the next one caught my eye. It was consistently the same men. I didn’t know who they were, or recognise their music, but the way they moved was awesome, the precision, the unison, the skill, it fascinated me.

One night around 2 a.m. during a bad run of insomnia, possibly something else you didn’t know about me, I travelled down that rabbit hole once again. With my ear phones in to suppress the noise/music from my household, I sat in the dark on the lounge watching these Reels, enjoying the distraction they brought me.

My attention was caught by one of the men sitting alone on the dance floor in a dark dance practice studio, after an intense midnight solo session. It was a Reel taken from a live recording he’d done previously where his fans asked questions while he was taking a break.
He was sitting crossed legged on the wooden floor, smiling slightly reading comments while catching his breath. He pauses and looked directly into the camera lens and clearly says the words, “I’m not okay”. His smile falters and disappears, and he grabs his t-shirt bringing it to his eye to wipe a tear that formed. The Reel ends then replays over again in a loop, as it’s designed to do if you don’t scroll on.

And that was when it happened.

That was when my soul broke.

It’s so clear to me still to this day, a softly whispered, “Oh, no!”, escaped my lips. I remember struggling to breathe, unable to pull in enough air into my lungs, as my throat constricted. Tears stung my eyes, I felt their wetness as they spilt out, and I started to weep. I wasn’t in external pain but I felt pain, deep, deep pain inside my chest. I couldn’t stop watching him say, “I’m not okay”. I couldn’t stop watching his expression as it gently fell. I couldn’t stop watching him wipe that tear. The Reel kept looping over, and over, and over, unaware of its impact, and I couldn’t stop watching.

In that moment that was his, he spoke my words out loud into the universe, his expressions were mine, the emotion was mine. I recognised all of it. Every movement, gesture, blink, breath, was me. He was my metaphorical mirror, and in that moment he reflected back to me what I wasn’t ready to see, but what I very clearly recognised.

And like a mirror shattering into tiny pieces, that little strip holding things together inside me gave up its battle… and just like that, my soul broke.