Navel Gazing

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The problem with breaking is no matter how much glue, sticky tape and patches you use, the intact original has gone forever.

The choice now is whether to keep patching it up and trying to make it look like the original, or turn it into something else completely.

I distinctly remember the first time I broke. More accurately I distinctly remember the first time I realised I was broken, nearly 10 years ago.

Part of me never really accepted I broke. I think there’s a sort of phantom limb thing going on, where you leap out of bed only to remember you don’t have any legs to support you. I can still mentally charge headlong into things only to discover I don’t have the emotional capacity to cope any more.

OK, my intact original was a naïve fool who didn’t realise he wasn’t invincible, but his legacy haunts me.

I grew up reading about heroes - Batman, Conan the Barbarian, King Arthur etc – and knew I was going to be one when I grew up. And at the core of all heroes is that solid nugget of indestructibility; no matter how bad the situation gets, no matter how hopeless it all seems, part of them never truly gives up. Even if they die, they die knowing they were right.

I used to watch programmes on TV about people who faced impossible situations - physical, mental and emotional - yet survived. They refused to be beaten and just kept on going.

I knew I’d be like that.

So to reach a point where I realised if I was pushed to the limit I wouldn’t survive, I would lay down and die, with no dignity, this was what felt like the ultimate self betrayal.

At my core I am no hero.

At my core I am mush.

And I don’t think I’ve ever truly forgiven myself for that.
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