Mini Idol Week 1: Someone Who Will Love You in All Your Damaged Glory

[tigrkittn]

 I prefer to be at least a little subtle with Idol prompts. I want them clearly identifiable, but as an "aha!" peeking out from the middle of the piece, not dropped on the reader's head like a brick. And yet. 

And yet perhaps this is one of the many ways in which I myself am a gloriously damaged soul. I say gloriously because I've reached an age where I have lost all shame, all desire to hide pieces of myself in fear of the disapproval or dislike of others. I say damaged because who among us is not? Often our damage, our flaws, our brokenness is what most clearly distinguishes us from the flat, dull grayness that is "most people."

When I was eight or ten I announced to my family that I would never be having children. Probably Grandma (I do remember this happened at her house) had said something about "when you have little ones of your own." 

My mother wailed, "What on earth did I do to make you think being a parent is so terrible?" But that wasn't it at all. They misunderstood. My fault - I had skipped over cause and gone right to effect. 

I would never have children because nobody would ever love me. At so young an age it didn't occur to me that I could have children without a husband - babies were made by mommies and daddies together, after all. And it was a clear and obvious fact that I would spend my life alone. 

Obvious to me, at least. The message had been made quite clear. Always.

I hope my mother doesn't have any memory of this. There's so much she doesn't remember these days, and so much we remember completely differently. As she enters her twilight years, I don't want to be the cause of anything that brings her sorrow or regret for things that can't be unsaid, undone. 

She did the best she could. That's all any of us can do. It's our one shared trait, universal amongst humans: our imperfection. We all fail. We're all broken.

And there can be beauty in that brokenness. Some turn theirs into righteous anger, others into determination to create change, others into art.

And some into love.

I do, in fact, have love in my life now after all. And determination, and occasionally things I like to think are art. Also cats. No children. 

And no regrets.