Letting go of broken things
When it first comes crashing down it’s a shock, a jolt. You’re going about your everyday business, making coffee, responding to emails, taking your dog for a walk, that kind of thing, and then suddenly there’s a hole in the roof and your precious things are thrown about the room in disarray. You didn’t hear it break or land, it’s just now there, in your space, displacing things you carefully placed, breaking things you carefully tended, a small tear in the fabric of your favorite couch.
You clean up the destruction, make everything new again. Fix the roof, patch the hole, buy new what was lost, glue and stitch back together what was damaged, until it’s almost as if it never happened. Certainly, nobody walking in would ever know unless they stayed awhile, looked carefully, maybe closed their eyes and ran their fingers along the small fissures, traced the neat stitches.
You breathe deeper again. Just an accident. These things happen. You fix and recover and move on.
The next time it happens, it’s less shock and more incredulity. Again? Really? How the hell? You pause for a while, surveying the damage and ignore the heaviness in your chest because it’s just surprise and disappointment, right?
You clean up the destruction, make everything new again. Fix the roof, patch the hole, buy new what was lost, glue and stitch back together what was damaged, until it’s almost as if it never happened. Certainly, there may be a few things that someone might notice if they came to visit, more if they stayed awhile, and looked carefully. The tear in the fabric of your favorite couch was a bit wider this time, not so easy to hide. You can see it now in the mornings when the light filters in through the blinds and hits it a certain way. You see it yourself through the archway as you pour your coffee and walk to your office to respond to your emails and walk out again to fetch the leash to walk your dog, and there’s a little pressure in your chest, which you pass off because it doesn’t do to dwell and these things happen. You fix and recover and move on.
The next time, you are stopped in your tracks. Incredulity becomes shock once more, not that it happened but that it happened again. Anger, resentment, exhaustion because you know what comes next.
You clean up the destruction, make everything almost new again. You do your best to hide the spider web of fissures and the trail of stitches, like pathways on a map to an unknown destination. But it’s obvious now that things are damaged and you can no longer repair them or buy them back to where they once were. Some things that are irreplaceable are lost and you grieve them in small ways, quietly, because they are just things and you are ok (you think) and although the sky has fallen three times now you are still in one piece and it’s ungrateful to think otherwise. You fix as best you can, recover, and move on, avoiding a glance through the archway in the mornings as you make your coffee because it doesn’t do to dwell.
It never stops being a surprise because you never know when it’s coming or where it will fall but you begin waiting for it. There is a brief period of relief after the last stitch is sewn, things tidied away, placed with care once more where they should be, and then slowly the tension begins to build. You find yourself waking up with ever-increasing dread, steeling yourself as you tiptoe out of bed and into the house. The heaviness in your chest has come and stayed and reminds you daily to beware, to prepare, to reserve energy and resources for the next time. You know now there will always be a next time. The waiting becomes trauma almost as powerful as the crash and destruction itself.
Eventually, you begin boarding up the windows, one by one. There are fewer things now to break and tear but what is left is precious and cannot afford to be broken. You convince yourself that you don’t need much but if you can just save and preserve these few things, that’s all you need, you’ll be ok; who are you to want more anyway?
But now the light cannot get in. The room is dark (which hides the damage) and you don’t go in there now anyway to bear witness. You spend your time circumventing it, distracting yourself from it, leaving the house when you might have stayed home, neglecting your previous caretaking. You don’t sit on your favorite couch anymore. Nobody comes over.
You start to live your life coiled, ready to spring into action at any moment. To do what, you’re not sure. Catch it? Prevent it? Hold up the roof with shaking hands if it begins to cave in? The futility of it doesn’t seem to matter, the illusion of control remains addictive. Sometimes you think you hear a sound and you look to the ceiling and try to anticipate where this time. You don’t turn on music anymore so you don’t miss the slightest noise, a warning sign. You’re no longer fixing and repairing but watching and waiting beside broken mirrors, fallen branches, and ripped fabric.
What was once your safe haven is now your bunker and you’re so ready.
Time passes and one day the light crashes through every board on a window and slices clean through a wall until there is now a door of blinding sunshine illuminating everything that is broken. And looking around, you realize everything is broken. Whatever you were saving or protecting now ceases to exist, there is just rubble, dust, pieces of what used to be. And although they are reminders that kept you anchored to the spot for so long, you realize they are no longer enough to hold you down.
You uncoil slowly, stiff and unsure, and stand in the bar of light that is reaching for you across damaged floorboards, feel its warmth, close your eyes, and take a single step.
You never look back into the darkness, leaving the broken things where they are in the shadows as you take the light with you and let go.
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This piece is part of a new collaborative project with Bryan Stewart Photography where we will each provide the other with an image as inspiration and then write something back in response.
