This is the cup I was gifted on leaving the NICU, two weeks after Nina was born. We’d moved from the maternity ward to a NICU family room - and though Nina was expected to need an incubator, or simply to stop breathing at any moment, neither eventuallity happened, despite a few terrifying close calls that had me running down the corridor in my PJs.
This cup was a beautiful emblem of her making it to two weeks. I treasured it, I loved it, and then last week, after 16 months, I smashed it. 16 months of coffee in that cup, of caffeine helping me through an era where I have had to quite literally drag myself up from the ground on a daily basis. When it happened, I didn’t even cry - I was too exhausted, too spent, too done. I stood, defeated, in the kitchen, surrounded by dirty pans I’d been rushing to wash in the precious hour before Nina was up again. Surrounded by unpacked boxes despite working tirelessly to settle in to our new home. And it was that, that made me cry. My numbness, my depression, my emptiness. The fact that I have sunk so far into my boots that I can’t even spare the luxury of allowing myself to grieve over a small but important present was, in itself, shattering.
I have no time to cry, I have no space for my own feelings, I have no empathy for my own need to be a human; a flawed, sentimental, slightly spoiled human. I have a history of severe anxiety, I have a diagnosis of PTSD and CPTSD, though I have mixed feelings about the fact that abuse that was done to me has been pathologized as a brokenness within me; it’s true however, that the Trauma broke me, repeatedly. Making me afraid to leave my house, my room, my head. But there have been times I have found healing through life’s challenges and rewards, when coupled with my a choice to be brave.
And so, after a moment of staring down at the broken shards of this beautiful cup...I reminded myself of that fact: that times have been (less but felt more) hard before, that the hard was what was teaching me, breaking me, forging me, shaping me. And I chose to believe this was one of those moments. And I thought to myself “I’m going to mend this cup, not well enough to use but well enough to keep.”
A friend once told me I reminded them of kintsugi. Fault lines are what some mental health professionals call the breaks in our psyche caused by trauma: pre-cracked lines in a brick that, if dropped from too high a height will split apart and bring on a breakdown. I’ll mend this cup, and it will have many fault lines. I can say with certainty that my trauma has made me ‘useless’, after a life of interpreting ‘usefulness’ as security, safety, love, this was an enormous blessing in disguise. Like me, this cup won’t have the liberty to be ‘of use’ any more, it will just have to ‘be’, and be okay with that. It will look beautiful, or maybe interesting, it will tell a story. Maybe it will never fully reform those broken lines, maybe the scars will not fade, maybe they will always in fact be wounds. Or maybe this shattered cup will remind me of my kinstugi nature; that I cannot help but repatch myself in new and unique ways. I’m tired of wishing I was undamaged, I’m long past tired of wearing damage as a badge. Yes I’ve been greatly, gravely hurt, yes I still have gold in my veins. Fault lines can heal, but not with the weapon that made them, and not by pretending they’re not there. I’d like to stop the rushing, the busyness, the trying to be productive, I’d like to put harmful people I’ve been drawn to because they feel familiar...away from me. In a life where I do the impossible every day - I’d like to do less, or perhaps to do more with the less. Less needing to be useful, needed - that is no way to guarantee love and acceptance.
I’d like to tell this cup that water will pour out and it’s okay that you make a mess, I would tell this cup that it’s unwise to teether on edges, that you deserve cushioning, and that you are beautiful, or maybe interesting. In that moment of what truly felt like a black nothingness pulling me in, who knew I would once again prove the hero to my own thoughts and alight upon the redemption of that smash. I am not of (much) use, I have fault lines that have retired me, there is much I cannot do, there is little I can. I continue to (try and) move carefully and gracefully, else I shatter again, but if I do, I’ll gather myself once more, because there is no shame to being in bits, its just a temporary state, fleeting as everything is, because maybe the crash is not the end, but the bell ringing in the next small, fleeting era.
