I am Broken.

Broken.

I am broken.

There is really no other way to describe my current state of affairs.

The only thing that keeps me sane is that made a conscious decision to see this as temporary. 

I am making a pledge to reinvent myself. 

This shift from survival mode to one of reinvention has given me purpose.

Otherwise, I would just be broken. If you read on, you might see why. And you just might encourage me to write a country album. Yeah, it's that bad.

I have a broken ankle

My ankle. See that tiny part chipped off at the bottom on the right side? 

Three weeks ago I was walking into my hostel in Cusco, Peru after visiting the gorgeous cathedral on the Plaza de Armas. The doorway has just one step down and even though I saw it, I still managed to roll my left ankle. I heard a snapping sound. I knew in my gut it was broken but it was only when the staff really started urging me to go to the 'gringo' clinic that I owned up, let them call me an ambulance, and got X-Rays.

Suddenly, just two days after completing the most incredible five-day trek to Machu Picchu, I was getting a cast wrapped around my left ankle in South America. 

I have a broken heart after my break up 

Broken Heart by TimOve on Flickr

The very next day, my relationship of over 7 years fell apart. Of course it didn't go from perfection to us breaking up. But the series of events that unfolded around my broken ankle highlighted, for me, the patterns and problems we had been having over the last months and, I suppose, since the beginning of our time together. 

There was the moment in our last argument when our entire relationship unraveled for me. One sentence out of her mouth that made me snap. So even though I would be stuck in Cusco, by myself, for who knew how long, I told her that was it. She had to leave. She was taking energy from me without giving it, exactly when I needed it. 

She left (after bringing me enough food to last a week) and I sat in my dank, cold basement hotel room completely alone for six days before getting on a plane to come 'home'. 

I am broke as a joke 

When we were sitting in that emergency room in Cusco, I cried my eyes out for awhile.  Not because I broke the ankle and not even because our plans would have to change. I was just so sick and tired of scraping by. I have these huge visions of what my life is supposed to be like, and having this broken ankle highlighted exactly what was wrong with it. For most, traveling the world non-stop for four years seems like the ultimate dream. I know how special it was, and I don't take a day of it for granted. But over the last year, despite working for 12 hours a day or more on our website and our business, we were progressively bringing in less and less money. 

I felt that we were never going to hit big enough to make the kind of money I really wanted. I don't ask for much, but laying there thinking about where I could go, it all seemed so hopeless because just paying for a last minute plane ticket back to Chicago or to Germany and paying to get the cast removed in six weeks - that was enough to almost put me in the negative. 

Thanks to Phoney Nickle on Flickr

I broke down and cried. We broke up. And then I had to buy that emergency plane ticket back to Chicago anyway. And now I am here for who knows how long, which means I'm having to own up to dealing with my taxes, getting Obamacare, and how long can I really stay with friends before I have to start paying rent?  My net worth is rapidly nearing three digits and this is not where I thought I would be at 34.

I have a broken business 

The worst part is that our business was based entirely on our story, and now there will be no more pages written in that story. So what to do about the business we have. She doesn't want to give it up, on the one hand, but has no interest in it on the other. I sunk huge dreams and aspirations into it and now I have no energy to keep it going. We haven't even announced the break-up on our website yet or in our newsletter. But I put all my eggs into that basket and now I don't know what to do.  As hard as the emotional side of our romantic break up is, the loss of all my dreams surrounding what our business could become is also a huge loss. 

With no other source of income at the moment, I have a broken leg, a broken heart, a broken business and  am totally broke. 

From Swiss Bones on Flickr

Let the healing begin

Somehow I have decided that I won't let this keep me down. Somewhere in my heart I know that I am meant for something - something that only my unique life and experience can share with the world. Now let the healing begin.