Mosaics

Last year, at this time, I was still living in hope.  I was living with a promise, and  I hadn’t yet experienced the worst day of my life.

(The worst day of your life so far… I have to add) #simpsons

I thought Christmas would be harder than it turned out to be.  
New Year, it turns out, is the one that to me.

Because everyone is recapping the year and this was the hardest year of my life (so far).

Last year, at this time, I had no idea what I had ahead of me or within me. While I had certainly faced challenges, trials, and trauma, the biggest hill was still ahead of me.

2021 showed me who I am. 2021 broke me in so many ways and I rebuilt myself again and again and again, bit by bit. And I am a mosaic– all my shattered pieces and more, reformed into something beyond what it was, both containing it and without. The tile is never a tile again, and yet it is now part of something bigger.

I am not ready to reflect on or remember this last year, but I know this– I fucking made it. I got through every single day of last year. Every single “next breath,” every “next step,” counting to five over and over again. Sometimes just watching seconds tick by while thinking “That’s another one, motherfucker.”

I’m learning to say “I’m not really okay right now,” without having to reach break-down level. I’m learning that even when I’m on my own, I can be okay. I can get through. That there are people who WANT to be near even if they cannot be. And that’s not nothing.

I’m learning that I can’t force recovery, or hate my way through healing.

And it turns out, I don’t need to protect the world from my grief. The world is big enough to hold it all. The love, the grief, the fear and the rage.

I am part of the beautiful chaos that surrounds me. We belong to the earth and to each other. We are not broken, we are mosaics.