what to do when things break
038-Monday Updates: pick up the pieces first
This morning.
I woke in a bed that wasn’t mine.
That’s not unusual. For nearly two years now, I’ve been waking in beds that aren’t mine. Cities that don’t belong to me. The body remains constant, but the room changes. The window frames a different street and a different type of light. Still, each time it happens, there exists a slight disorientation. A discombobulation. As if part of me still expects to return to the known world.
I don’t think I’ll be able to go back.
I’ve been engaged in a long, silent battle with shelter, with time, with the future. Nothing dramatic. No explosions. Just the quiet erosion of certainty.
And then there’s this: the tug-of-war between what I want and what I owe. Every new person I meet shifts the weight of the world slightly and alters the axis. What I mean is: people change the math. And it’s easier, always easier, to lean into novelty than to resist it.
This afternoon.
I bought a book just to destroy it.
I was walking through Centro, wandering really, and I came across a bookstore I hadn’t seen before, called Regla Librería. A narrow space filled with yellowing paper and heat. The woman at the counter seemed pleasant, but as she lead me down to the English aisle, she said sternly, “Prohibido tomar foto”, No Photos. A bit of a hard ask for a photographer.
On a shelf in the back, I found a book I had once hated. That felt like the right place to start. I paid for it and left.
Back in the apartment, I brought out an old X-Acto knife; the same one I used on the church job in Wisconsin. A terrible thing, the blade barely holding in place, requiring the pressure of two fingers just to stay still. Unsafe, certainly. But it worked.
I opened the book and began. The blade slid across the paper. The pages came free one by one, like dead leaves surrendering to autumn. I was making something new from something broken. Or maybe I was just breaking it differently.
Tonight.
A glass shattered.
I didn’t see it; half-hidden under the bed, one of those ordinary objects that lives quietly until it doesn’t. I stood up, kicked it without knowing, and it slid across the floor before collapsing into itself. Three large pieces, and a hundred slivers.
My first instinct was the usual one. Of course. One more problem. But I resisted it, just barely. I got down on my hands and knees and picked up the pieces. Gently. Carefully. The sound of glass against glass. It felt like music.
I don’t always handle breakage well. I tend to hide the broken things, tuck them into corners, and promise to return later. I postpone the moment of reconciliation. I tell myself there are more urgent things. Bigger things. Important matters.
But there’s always a cost. I know it. One day, without thinking, I’ll walk across that unswept floor, and a piece of glass will remind me.
I have many things like that in my life. Invisible breakages. Small urgencies I’ve declared unimportant. But they are not. And pretending otherwise doesn’t make them disappear.
They wait, but it’s necessary to pick up the pieces before they are lodged into any heels.
I need to get used to things breaking and pick up the pieces as they come.
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FIND ME ON
Monday Updates is a section of this blog where I’m letting my hair down, figuratively. I am often preoccupied with getting things perfect, rather than simply sharing and enjoying the process while talking about life. Instead of the tradition of hating Mondays, I’m going to try to associate them with creative freedom and allow myself to speak my mind without the worry that a perfectionist usually has. Things here may be a bit disjointed, incomplete, and occasionally nonsensical, but they may also be playful, curious, and whimsical. I will do my best to make it more of the latter.
Love this reylia 🥰🥰