To Be Complete

Everyone is broken. Each of us has been shattered by life in some way or another, crushed or wounded beyond repair. A part of me is comforted by the broken parts in others. Somehow it helps to know that I'm not the only one, and I guess looking for those broken parts in others has become automatic for me. Rarely do I come across exceptions, and it's difficult to trust that it's not there in some people.

There is one couple whose broken spots I still haven't located. I've known my boss and his wife for more than eight years, for example, and they still seem complete in a way that others are not. I've seen them stressed and angry and I've seen them bicker, but they work it all out. Their lives are what normal should be. They're more normal than normal -- they're beyond normal, super-normal, perhaps. They're both funny and popular and they always turn the things they say into the right things, even when they're not. Their lives seem touched by fortune and untouched by whatever it is that breaks the rest of us. They don't let the world bother them too much. I must be missing something, though, even after all this time. I mean, is it possible for anyone to pretend that well, and for that long?

Being broken isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's just that I sometimes find myself wishing I were whole. The scars aren't what make us incomplete; it's the broken parts, the gaps and poorly glued-back-together pieces that ruin us. To be whole, I would have had to withstand the crushing forces, to beat them or, at the least, not surrender to them. I don't want to be fragmented. I want the choices I face to be clear. I want my intentions to be focused. I don't want to waver or hesitate at the precipices inside my broken self.

See, to be whole isn't to have it easier; it's to have certainty about who you are. With certainty comes a kind of power and freedom: The kind of power that allows you to be deliberate without faking it, and the kind of freedom that protects you from all of the wondering and questioning about potentials.

I imagine how much more straightforward life would be if I were whole. And then I wish there were a way to repair myself.

 

Writing Stuff Down

Every now and then, I'm tempted to start a new journal, one that I can touch and feel and make marks in. I miss writing stuff down on paper, especially stuff that doesn't have to make sense to anyone else but me. I miss using a pen and hearing the scratchy sound that it produces on paper. There's something very comforting about it. But maybe this is a sign of old age, like someone missing the way it feels to write with a quill and a bottle of ink.

Mainly I miss getting stuff off my chest and having it seep into the paper, like blood. As much as I enjoy pounding on a keyboard, the act lacks seepage. No matter how hard I hit those keys, the feeling I put into it will never be more visible. Maybe word processors should be more like pianos; if they were touch sensitive, all of the letters could look different from each other and compositions could be more expressive; some words would have more flourish, some would look splattered onto the document. That's actually not a bad idea, but it would still be missing something.

That something could be the inherent adventure involved in avoiding paper cuts. It could be in how definite or permanent it feels to make an actual mark on something real, something that was once living, and in knowing that deletion isn't possible. It could be about the relationship with the notepad, having carried it everywhere and turned it this way and that during the writing process, having left some sweat on the paper and having been given some ink stains in return.

Whatever the reason, a journal kept on paper just seems more personal, and sometimes I think about starting one again. Maybe one day.