Disclaimer: This is a repost. I posted this August 10th and took it down after less than 3 hrs. Because, maybe I wasn’t ready to be that open. Maybe you weren’t ready. Maybe it’s more that the whole idea of us being broken and weak makes us uncomfortable and we feel like we have to fix it.
And maybe the point is just that. Learning how to realize our own brokenness. Learning how to exist in being uncomfortable because there is something to be learned from it. From me. From you. From us.
It was the summer where everything broke. Air conditioning and car parts, toilet seats and toilet scrubbers. Social stigmas, etiquette and early morning stretching routines. Rules about where to go and what to do and what to wear. Commitments, connections, collarbones. Hammocks, hair brained ideas, tree branches, trust. Boundaries. Wine bottles, wine glasses and others full of whiskey. Bonds. Systems. Expectations. Assumptions.
River rafting paddles, parking rules and doorknobs. Lightbulbs, broom handles, bathing suit ties. Coffee makers, coffee mugs, camera lenses, diets, waistband buttons and opinions on body image. Friendships, phones, backpack straps, soles of boots, necklace clasps, watch bands, ponytail holders. Promises. Inflatable flamingos and those air mattresses with the thousand cup holders.
It all broke. It was one long run on sentence of broken things; in my house, in my neighbors houses, in my friends, in my kids, in our country. In me.
If you know me at all, you know the past 5 years have been a slow motion version of things breaking, the day Norah was born, acting as the catalyst of my ‘great undoing’. Suffice it to say, I’m not always calm and collected when things break. I tantrum like a little kid. I cry. I panic. I stomp my feet. I slam doors. I shout. I leave. I drive away with all the windows rolled down letting the wind make as much noise as it wants. I wander. I drink. I don’t shower or I take 5 showers a day.
I sit on docks and stare into mountains for hours. I run. I sweat. I eat all the sugar I can find including quarts of ice cream and spoonfuls of brown sugar. I binge on Doritos and Oreos and Cap’n Crunch and leftover Halloween candy.
I defend myself incessantly. I make excuses. I insult other people and make bad choices. I am irrational and irresponsible.
And, none of that fits in the box I need it to to make myself feel good, or to make you feel good, or to make any of it look good or to make sense so that we can all say everything is fine and fits into our version of what brokenness should look like and we can all be ok and move on.
No. In fact, the box that that supposedly fits into? Well, it broke, too.
I, then, turn the house upside down looking for the gorilla glue to stick it all back together somehow. Or the packing tape to at least tape up the bottom so it doesn’t all catastrophically fall out when I try to lift it again.
But, when a summer hits me with everything breaking at once, I drop the pieces I have left, lift up my hands and realize, some broken things stay broken.
Some broken things don’t need to be fixed.
They need to be swept up and thrown out.
Their absence creates space.
And space precedes potential.