Broken pieces
I used to think healing meant putting myself back together. Finding every broken piece, figuring out where it belonged, and somehow rebuilding the person I was before everything happened. As if there were an original version of me buried somewhere underneath all of this, untouched and waiting to be recovered.
I don't think I believe that anymore.
Some pieces don't go back where they came from. Some are missing entirely. Others have edges that will never fit together the same way again. For a long time, I looked at those places as evidence of everything that was wrong with me. Every scar was something to hide. Every crack was another reason I wasn't who I was supposed to be.
But maybe the broken pieces are part of what makes me good.
Not because what broke me was good. I don't have to romanticize pain or pretend that terrible things happened for some beautiful reason. Some things simply hurt. Some things took pieces of me that I deserved to keep. I can acknowledge that without allowing those things to have the final word on who I became.
Because the broken places changed the way I see people. I recognize certain kinds of silence now. I understand that the person laughing the loudest can still be hurting. I know how much courage can hide inside seemingly insignificant decisions.
I know that sometimes getting through an ordinary Tuesday is a victory nobody else will ever understand.
Maybe I'm stained glass rather than a window.
A perfect window lets light through without changing it. But stained glass has been cut apart intentionally—hundreds of separate pieces held together along their broken edges. And when the light finally reaches it, every fragment does something different with it.
The damage didn't create the light.
It taught the light new ways to get through.
I don't need to become the person I was before I broke.
Maybe that person couldn't have understood everything I understand now. Maybe healing isn't erasing the cracks at all. Maybe it's learning that I can carry them without allowing them to become the entirety of who I am.
I can be damaged and still be gentle.
I can have known darkness and still choose not to become it.
I can carry broken pieces and still build something beautiful.
And maybe the parts of myself I've spent years trying to hide are the very places where the light gets through.