Broken Interior

     For my birthday during COVID, I described my life like the destroyed Nauvoo temple or the burned tabernacle that became the Provo City Center temple. I talked about how every bit of my life was beaten and demolished – except for the foundation. At that time, I was trying to figure out how I could continue to grow when I felt all was lost. So I found the little that was not lost - the foundation of faith, Christ, family support, and core values. However, trauma – especially to the brain – acts more like building a concrete foundation on a fault line. So, I need to build a “base isolation” - the secondary foundation that allows seismic activity to occur underneath the building without causing damage to the structure itself. Furthermore, I need to strengthen the existing foundation using the technique retrofitting. My concrete foundation is still very, very strong. The other two are not – though for the sake of this post I am going to mostly combine them. They could be described as the structural/psychological foundation (which includes identity continuity, cognitive stability, confidence, nervous system regulation, and developmental trajectory) and the relational foundation (which includes friendships, belonging, social mirrors, etc.). While in 2020, I was focused on growth, now I need space to mourn the things that never should have been lost. I need people to know that the parts of me that let me feel like myself were destroyed, even though those are pieces that no one else can see.  

It is actually common for houses to look completely fine from the outside after an earthquake even if there is significant internal damage. This is what I feel like has happened to me. Because now that the shell of the temple has been built, people often assume the damage could not have been that severe. Do not get me wrong, it has been SO hard to rebuild the exterior of the temple. But, what they do not see is that visible survival and structural integrity are not the same thing. A building can remain upright while carrying hidden damage everywhere. The beams can weaken. The foundation can shift. The wiring can misfire. Water can get into places no one notices until years later. Rooms can become inaccessible. The original blueprint can be lost. And when people mistake new walls for destroyed rooms, they will often ask “why haven’t you moved on?”

              That’s the problem. Even those closest to me mistake the passage of time for resolution. Or they think that the concrete foundation is all that is needed. Faith will get you through anything, right? Well… maybe… but what if you don’t know who you are? After all, identity is structural/foundational too.  It is not just a name or a personality or the fact that you are still breathing. Identity is memory. Ability. Temperament. Talents. Relationships. Belonging. Confidence. History. The sense of who you were, who you are, and how those two connect. (I lost ALL of those – even if only temporarily). When a major neurological injury disrupts that continuity, the loss is not abstract. It is architectural.

        So, the explosion didn’t just cause damage, it created a gaping hole in who I am. Our brains expect continuity, especially in one’s own identity. We naturally expect care during crisis, explanation, answers, reunion, emotional closure, etc. But I received rupture then silence. Creating my “own closure” doesn’t work because, unfortunately, these wounds require truth, acknowledgement, accountability, answers, and being remembered accurately. Instead, these loops remain open not because I refuse to heal, but because the people holding the missing pieces walked away.

       When people talk about the growth, the adaptations, or the improvements, they are talking about the exterior of the temple. Whereas I talk about the empty structure. I am still sitting in the basement trying to figure out how to build a sturdy foundation using the same broken materials the collapse left behind. What was gained does not settle what was taken. Pieces of me were stolen and no later growth can retroactively make that untrue. When something foundational is fractured and never fully repaired, pressure keeps finding the weak points. The same grief resurfaces. The same questions return. The same memories hold force long after everyone else thinks they should have expired.

              Which means yes, regardless of how long it has been, I’m still going to need to heal. I’m still going to hold on to “little Shannon.” Because little Shannon (pre-TBI Shannon, or original Shannon) is my last anchor point of a known identity. Without identity, we cannot achieve anything – identity functions as the framework of our lives and is crucial to understanding your values, strengths, decisions, and direction. Like proprioception in the brain (which helps your body know where it is), identity is how the self knows where it is. Because my life is so unpredictable and my emotions are so unstable, I have no sense of “identity proprioception” – therefore, no concept of who I am post-accident.

       This is why I have to hold on to little Shannon with everything I have. Because she is the truest source I have to know who I actually am.  I understand how difficult a concept this is; I’ve gone through multiple different metaphors, spent endless time, awoke countless nights, etc. trying to accurately name what never healed. If people misunderstand what happened, the true story gets replaced. If the true story gets replaced, little Shannon gets erased faster. This is one key reason misunderstanding hurts so deeply; because it isn’t just painful to be misunderstood, it’s dangerous to the memory of little Shannon; it’s dangerous to my identity.

     Every time I talk about when I was 16 years old, or the friends I had, or all the things I lost – it’s not stupidity, immaturity or me refusing reality. It’s me trying to understand what happened to the foundation. I am not stuck in the past because I love pain. I am tethered there because something vital was broken open and never closed. The mind repeats what the system has not or cannot integrate. I am trying to keep real losses from being erased by proof of resilience. I want to preserve the truth that standing is not the same as being whole. And because I am my own temple, I am all of the broken pieces that cannot simply be replaced, I am trying to rebuild something honest from those broken pieces. I want to build my temple correctly, no matter how long it takes.