I know you’ve been through a lot. I know you’re still not ready to come out and can’t see yourself the way everybody else sees you.

And, I can also understand that you view yourself as damaged goods, never worth the value you’re able to provide to others, even if you’d be able to encourage somebody else to see how worthy they are in close-enough-to-equal scenarios.

But bear me a few questions, if you will. How does your being damaged have anything to do with your ability to provide value to other people? Have you ever considered that you’re able to deliver such value not despite your being damaged but because you’re damaged?

No one knows how to heal others better than someone who’s been truly, deeply hurt and has lived the life that others can’t imagine. No one knows how to heal as much as someone who’s been in a hopeless, dark pit of despair and managed to crawl out of it.

Your reply by now is either that others helped you out of that hole or that, in very substantial ways, you’re still in there and your ability to walk among us is a precarious facade that may blow away with the slightest uncomfortable social breeze.

Look, I understand and support your ability to really, truly feel however you feel, and I’ll stand in this space with you until the end of days. At the same time, I refuse to validate the fiction you’ve created that says you’re not able to be happy, seen, and a fully worthy member of our community. The objective truth is that you bring a quintessential value that we cannot be fully human without.

We’re all damaged goods. We’ve all been cut – some of us deeper than others. Some of us are beautiful precisely because of the way our imperfection reminds us of our transcendence. (Click to tweet – thanks!)

All of our lives are too short to be lived as damaged goods. All throughout our lives, we are damaged goods. The human condition is full of apparent paradoxes.

How you choose to write the story from here is up to you, but know that the pen is in your hands. Will your story be of damage or transcendence?

p.s. The emotional maelstrom that this may have triggered doesn’t change the fact that the pen is still in your hands.