Broken

It's something that we all are, at least a little bit.

It happens to some of us really early on, and others not until later. I'm starting to believe though, that by at least your mid thirties, something about you is going to be a little broken. And that's ok. It really is. It makes you more human, more compassionate, more understanding, and more interesting.

I feel like in order to really exist, in the most complete way, you have to have known both absolute joy and absolute desperation. You have to have known pain and to have suffered, at least a little bit, in order to experience true empathy. And I think that empathy is essential.

We are all we have you guys. Us, you and me. The friends, family, colleagues, and even the strangers. The randoms on the street. This is what we have. So why not just embrace it? In all of its broken glory. Help each other and be fucking good to each other.

It seems so simple.


My son turned 14 an hour and a half ago, in his eyes, though truth be told I think that more accurately he turns 14 in about 5 hours. I was never the kind of mom that remembered the exact time. I was too tired. I don't think that makes me a bad person. I know what's important and it isn't the time of day that he was born, it is rather that he was born at all, and that I let him fall hard into my heart. He has stayed there for a long time and I can't see him going anywhere anytime soon. He thinks he's halfway out the door. On his way to being a full blown grown up.

But he still tells me that he loves me. Often. Without fear and without being forced. He says it at random, while running back and forth from his den of video games to the kitchen or the bathroom or a friend's house. He is the best part of me, made whole and alive and separate all at once. He is the best part of a broken me. And as a human, he will have broken parts too, and likely does already. I have space for all of him always, love for him always, even the broken him, the grown up him, the him that needs me less and less all the time.

I guess I break more as I write this. And that's ok too. In the morning I will make blueberry pancakes and he will open his presents and then he will play video games with his friends and I will be a shadow. Then for dinner we will make veggie sushi together because it's his favorite and that's that. Another day, another year, my heart always growing so that he will fit.

We adapt. We grow. We have to.