Beautifully Broken Glass

Ever notice how beautiful a piece of broken glass is? It has smooth and sharp edges, and if you look closely enough you can see the ridges from the glass that was once attached, the ridges that tell the story of where the shard used to fit. The ridges are usually wavy but continuous, smooth but sharp, scarring but beautiful.  These ridges, to me, tell the true story of the whole and the shard, displaying the fragility of the original glass for all to see.

I think that glass does best what humans, myself included, have a difficult time doing: breaking. It’s difficult to accept fragility; it’s difficult to accept that we can be easily broken. And as difficult as fragility is to accept it’s even more difficult to admit. It’s hard to admit that we’re breakable; it’s hard to admit that we hurt and grieve and hope and feel disappointment. It’s just plain hard. And not only is it hard, but it’s scary. It’s so incredibly scary.

Because to me fragility or breakability is dangerous. To me, it’s dangerous to put everything out there. To me, it’s dangerous to breakdown in a heap of emotion or fragility because then I’m at risk for hurt, and I don’t especially enjoy being hurt. I honestly can’t say that I know anyone who does. To me, it’s dangerous to be fully fragile, and I think this to the point of being intensely apologetic whenever I do, apologetic for being fragile, and also apologetic to the person that I am being fragile with.

I think, or rather I know, that my biggest struggle is admitting that I am breakable. And despite the fact that I know I’m not alone in being breakable I still want to believe that I am invincible and unbreakable and emotionally indestructible. But I’m not. I am not invincible or unbreakable or emotionally indestructible because I Am Fragile. I. Am. Fragile. There, I said it. As scary as it is to admit, I just admitted it, right here, on my blog, for all the world to see. And I have the urge to delete it right now because I still don’t want to believe it, that I am breakable, that I am capable of breaking at all.

But I am breakable and fragile sometimes. I do have emotions; I do break; I do get hurt. And as scary as it is there is a beautiful thing about fragility. Like the ridges in a piece of broken glass, fragility shows the ridges and grooves of the real me. I have made some of my best friends through the minute amount of fragility that I show, and I know that fragility, or rather my comfortableness in being fragile with them, is a huge part of those friendships.

Now I wish that I could say that I will all of a sudden start being vulnerable and breakable around everyone, but I won’t because that’s a hard habit to break, a hard defense mechanism to outwit. And I’m trying; I’m trying so hard, but I’m just not to that point yet. I hope that within the course of this year I will at least get more comfortable with that and stop keeping all the people in my life at a distance. But for right now I’m satisfied with knowing and admitting, however grudgingly, that I am fragile and breakable, and I’m slowly working toward accepting that showing fragility is OK. Because broken glass is beautiful and so is the real, and fragile, me.