Friday, June 21, 2013

The Nature of Broken Things

I'm a really emotional person. Highly, highly emotional and very few people get to see any side to me other than my aloofness, my slight meanness, or my totally engrossing kindness*. The few who see behind the little that I do show, however, know that there's so much more here than my frame or any words I could ever say would tell you.

I'm moving into my very own apartment in less than a month. I have never lived one-hundred percent independently in my life. Sometimes, I'll admit it's felt like I've been autonomous from my support system but in my mind of minds I know it's never been true. But it's about to be. So as I branch out on this new life, this big life, this new big thing I keep looking over at this broken couch in my mom's living room.

She's told me I can have the broken couch. And I look over at it and just feel waves of emotion. I hate that couch. I love that couch. I'm angry at that couch. I feel like I need that couch. But the truth is, that couch is me, or what I believe parts of myself to be: broken, damaged, and inadequate.

I don't want to bring damaged, broken things with me, because I feel like I don't have room in my new life for more than one big, damaged, broken thing. And that one damaged, broken thing happens to be five foot tall, with an afro.

As much as I think I've grown, as much as I can read and hear in the words I chose to use and the thoughts I now think, the changes in me that have happened haven't mended this brokenness I always feel. It could be self-imposed, as I don't let too many people near enough to me to heal or hurt. It could be the fact that I feel I haven't found what it is I'm going to truly "do" for the rest of my life and thus have no direction. I keep thinking that if I can find what's broken and fix it, that all of my problems will disappear, but deep down I know that's not true; by the time I find what's broken, something new will be cracked or in need of attention.

Do we ever really heal? Do we ever get fixed? More pertinient to my close-knit life, can we, in time, heal ourselves? I feel like I've been putting bandages and salve on these wounds that are really slow to close: I see myself healing, and I see myself doing better, but I'm frustrated with the seeming lack of forward movement, with the lack of visible progress.

I have a decision to make: I either take the broken couch, or I start fresh and make a new base. I can either take these feelings of inadequacy and all this repressed anger with me, or I can try and let it all go and start something new. Each of those prospects are terrifying.

I guess I'll get some beanbag chairs, and figure out the rest later.

*Not to brag, but when you hear it enough it sort of sticks with you.