Broken
2007-9-22
Another day, is it really true I have to get up from my warm bed, the broken pieces of me falling away, my heart cracked and full of holes? It hurts, my head is pounding, there's no blood in my veins, every part of my body lays in jagged pieces of hardened glass.
The alarm cuts through the pieces of my skull on the pillow, rattling every piece of me. I reach over with a cracked hand, and push the snooze button. I can't get up again, today it just isn't going to work.
I slip away again, to a dream where my body is whole and I can move completely. My hands are seamless, my head is in one piece, I'm walking across a field. There's a bee following me, it's swarming around my head, trying to sting me. I run from it, but I can't get away. It stings me in my left ear and I'm wide awake to the sound of the alarm buzzing again. It must have been only seconds later, though the snooze was 15 minutes.
I reach over, my hand is even more broken then before. I must have rolled over it and broken another finger off. It's harder to press the power button, but finally I get it turned off. I won't be going to work today, I'm simply too broken to even consider it.
It first started happening when I was very young. I would wake up in those early years, one small piece of myself fallen off. Maybe an ear, or an eye, or part of an arm. I would find the piece in the folds of my bedding and push it back in place. Every time the pain would be an immense assault at the place where it fell off but never any blood. I thought I was a freak, surely no one else wakes up with parts of themselves broken off.
As the years went on and I hid it from everyone around me, my parents, my siblings, my lovers, and my friends, more and more pieces would fall off every morning. The most terrifying day was once when I stood up, thinking I was fully formed, shocked to not feel a single piece out of place, when suddenly my continence fell and with it every piece that had ever fallen off before and many more. It was as if I exploded, a china doll placed in the kiln for far too long.
The pain was so great I blacked out and was unable to put myself back together until that evening. That night I was too afraid to fall asleep again.
This morning, my blankets heavy on the heap of my body. I struggle to use my arm, the only part of myself to remain whole most mornings, to grab pieces I can and press them against the mass remaining.
Slowly I can rebuild myself by adding those pieces to the bottom of my arm, building in towards my belly, down around my waist and each leg, laboriously because I can hardly bend that far in this state for fear the rest of my body already reassembled would burst into pieces again. After the legs, I work my way up the chest, leaving the cavity where my heart belongs empty.
I assemble my neck and the other arm quickly, these pieces I can adjust easily later. The head is of course very important, without it I look very odd out in public.
I then, last of all, begin adding the tiny pieces of my heart as I struggle for breath. This is the most painful part, my heart totally broken every time. Every morning I find it in many more pieces than the day before.
It is delicate work, so I prop my eyes against my rib cage so as to have a better view of the cavity. As I put the tiny red glass pieces back into place, gradually I begin to feel whole. This is the part that really matters, without this in one completely seamless piece of glowing red, I cannot bear to move at all. The pain of any empty heart is simply too much to bear.
After my heart is put back together, beating once again, the blood rushes through my veins, washing over my body in a wave of heat and life. I gradually begin to regain normal awareness of my surroundings. Before this, it is quite impossible to focus on anything that is not my own broken pieces or the immediate surroundings.
It is now possible to then stand, stumble to the shower, and carefully wash my still cracked body. The heat of the water again washes warmth over me, gradually helping to seal the many cracks all over my body.
Tears form in my eyes, I am alone but once again I am whole, at least until the next morning, when I will again have fallen apart, and when I will again painfully put myself back together.
