Have you ever seen a glass while it is breaking?

Have you noticed how the initial impact

Causes the whole glass to crack in various places,

And then scatter when it falls to the ground?

And when the tiny little pieces of the glass

Fall to the ground and lie there,

We come to the understanding that once something is broken,

It cannot be fixed again.

Because after all,

It is nothing but an inanimate object,

And so we just pick up the mess and forget all about it.

But what if we are the mess?

What if we are the ones that are broken?

What do we do then?

With lifeless objects it’s all fine,

We know that we can’t fix what’s broken,

There’s no life in it anyway,

And so we just let it go.

But we are capable of being fixed after we’ve been broken,

And so we try to pick up our broken pieces and heal ourselves.

We might look to others to help fix the mess that’s been made of us,

But soon we realise that no one except us can fix ourselves,

And that the others we might find merely just hold on to our pieces

While we stick them together again.

And so,

We try to learn how to fix ourselves.

But the process is so hard,

And the path to healing is so torturous,

That we almost always feel like giving up.

We break down time and again,

We fall while we try to rise,

And maybe that is exactly why we find it so difficult.

And maybe,

That is why we hurt so much.

Somewhere down the line we realise how easily we broke,

How quickly we ended up a mess,

But we now see how much time and effort it takes,

And how carefully we have to tread on sharp edges,

To put our broken pieces back together…

These broken pieces with jagged edges

Are what make us bleed even more,

And this is exactly why healing is even more painful for us.

But maybe, just maybe,

If only we had learned to love ourselves before we loved anyone or anything else,

If only we had learned to care for ourselves

And put ourselves before others,

We might not have shattered into pieces.

And maybe, just maybe,

If we were still unbroken,

We wouldn’t be hurting like this.

All we would have had to do then,

Would’ve been to nourish and nurture ourselves like we would a garden.

Yes, we would’ve treated ourselves like the most beautiful and colourful garden,

And watered our flowers daily,

And watched the flowers bloom…

We would’ve been whole,

We wouldn’t have had to cry through this unbearable pain,

If only somebody had taught us —

Or if only we had taught each other

How to love ourselves.