MagsMac ‘n’ Cheese

It has always amazed me how quickly and how cleanly heartbreak can cut a life in two.

One moment, you are one person… And a moment later, you are someone completely different. And because it is always during the mundane that things truly fall apart, you are probably doing something so ordinary that what happens next is even more shattering. You may be standing in a grocery store picking out the best grapefruit, sitting on the couch flipping through channels…

For me, that moment came when I was 16 and coming home from hostessing at the local pasta place. One moment, I was an ordinary little girl. I fell out of bed every morning joyful in the fact that it was a new day and that I was living it. I was doing well in school, I had crushes on boys, I reveled in the drama that defined being a teenager… Only because I didn’t know what real drama looked like. Until my dad committed suicide.

And the next moment, the moment my world fell apart and I believed nothing was ever again going to appear as it had before, I knew what it was to shatter. I knew what loss and real rage felt like and what people meant when they said their heart was broken. And I never knew if I would trust again or if my world would ever right itself. Nothing would ever be the same and the pieces all looked too small to ever pick up.

I have been thinking about that moment a lot in recent months. I love the life that I have and contradictory to what I believed at 16, the world began turning again… but sometimes I can’t help but peer through the looking glass and wonder what my life would look like if it had continued on unbroken. And lately I have been mourning what I left behind on the other side.

But while I mourn those things that were lost, I have also come to the conclusion that I wouldn’t have my life any other way. What makes us human and vulnerable is the fact that we live our lives constantly balanced on the edge of a razor blade. When we fall off, when we shatter… it is the moment that we find ourselves on our knees, picking up the pieces, that is the most important. Because when the pieces are all put back together, light shines through them in a different way than it ever has and what is left is more interesting and special than anything that came before.

And that is truly what makes all that is life so beautiful.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/35660391@N08/4266283238/