Sometimes We Simply Feel Strong as Glass and That’s OK

“Cause I'm only strong as glass
They say I'm built to last but I could break
Yeah I'm only strong as glass

And I am all I have so if I break, there's no more.”

Goapelle, Strong As Glass (2014)

Most of my life I’ve felt as if I was only as strong as glass. And I don’t mean that in a physical sense, but in an emotional sense. Inside, my spirit or soul has always felt fragile. It was severely damaged in my childhood when I chose to give all of my personal power away to my parents and grandparents.

This is a choice that most every child in an abusive home makes. Children basically have no other choice because they believe their parents and grandparents are infallible and all-powerful, like God. A child believes that his/her parents have to be right and that he/she has to be wrong. So when a child is shamed into believing that he/she is defective in some way, worthless or unlovable, he/she can reach that point of being emotionally devastated; even annihilated.

Children who are emotionally destroyed in this way often don’t learn how to protect themselves. Even if they learn boundaries, they often don’t have the ability to enforce them. There’s too much self-loathing and too much fear inside to enable them to set good boundaries. Instead, their concern becomes focused on pleasing others—even those who abuse them—in order to receive some form of validation.

Over the past 19 years of recovery I’ve learned to face my shame and to take much of my personal power back from it. This has helped me to set better personal boundaries. I have also learned to face my fears of losing people from my life who balk at the new boundaries that I set. And I’ve decide it’s better not to have those people in my life.

Some days I feel very strong as I set and stick to new boundaries, and I feel a great deal of empowerment and satisfaction. But there are still those days when I feel only as strong as glass inside. I feel very fragile and very breakable. And yes, sometimes I feel like one negative statement sent my way, one little whiff of disapproval, could actually force me to shatter into a million pieces; that it could actually annihilate me.

On those days, I accept the fact that there’s still a very wounded inner-child inside of me; one that still feels very fragile and helpless; one that still feels forced to surrender all of his power to others. So I allow that wounded child to grieve and I ask my Higher Power to help me to grieve the damage of the past and to set me free from it, once and for all.

And eventually I return to feeling fine. I return to feeling empowered by the new boundaries that have provided me with new respect for myself and a renewed respect from others. And all is well in the moment we call NOW.