Broken

It’s garbage day, and I’m sending away “broken”. 

I don’t really agree with it, anyway. So many people who’ve lived, loved, and lost call themselves broken. Damaged. Flawed. 

We’re not broken, we’re just not kids anymore. Sure, we’ve had some terrible moments, truly awful experiences. We’ve really been through it, but we are definitely not broken. We’re whole… and then some.

The wild adventures we chose over prime-time TV throughout life may have sent us spinning, caused a few bumps and bruises, and cost us in some ways, but I refuse to believe that we are any less because of it. 

If anything we’re more because of the terrible (wonderful) choices that we’ve made. I’m still smiling. I hope you’re smiling, too. 

You are certainly not broken, and don’t get mad at me for saying so, but we’re just older. Wiser, maybe, and dumber, in some ways. Softer and harder, more and less beautiful, richer and poorer… but not broken. 

Life changes us. That doesn’t mean it breaks us. We change- we learn our boundaries and our limits. 

I remember one Summer, in a saltwater pool, I was teaching a toddler to swim. She pushed me away, and with a determined look, she stepped into the pool. She sank, and she reached for my hand. Then she did it again. 

In time, she agreed to hold my hand while she swam, acknowledging that she could swim much better with someone to hold on to. Eventually, she learned to swim on her own. 

Had she stopped before she was willing to ask for help, she never would have learned anything, save perhaps a fear of water. 

We are all swimming. And we didn’t know we needed help in the beginning and we sank. We sank, we asked for help, we learned our lesson, and we eventually swam on our own. At which point did we break? 

Never. As long as we’re here we’re not broken. So long as we keep going, we’re whole. 

Whatever stage you find yourself in, all that matters is that you keep going, take a hand when needed, use a flotation device if you have to. 

Eventually, most of us will have the shitty relationship, lose people we love, stay married too long, suffer toddlers or teenage children, or mourn losing or not having kids at all. We burry pets, and parents, children. We lose our jobs, gain and lose weight, fight with best & worst friends, and we change. 

We change, but we don’t break. Here I am, overweight and middle-aged, alone in a pandemic trying my best to raise children and train dogs, and I’m whole. I’m happy. I’m sending away the idea that a life filled with fantastic stories somehow breaks us. 

Broken is going in the trash this week, separated from the food scraps, of course.