It’s Time To Embrace Your Brokenness
By MJ Mariano
Whenever someone asks how you’re doing, you always reply with “I’m okay.” At times, if it’s a friend who asked, you would admit that you feel ugly, sad or broken. This friend may comfort you—then you would appreciate it—but if the same feeling does not go away, perhaps the problem lies not with the things you cannot grasp and control but instead within the things that you actually can.
It’s time to embrace your imperfections. It’s time to remind yourself that no one and nothing in the world is perfect. Not one body in the world is perfect; even models hide their insecurities behind the shadows of cameras. Not one personality is perfect; there will always come a point in our lives when we encounter misunderstandings and fights with someone else. Not one mind is pure either; for in everyone’s mind lies feelings of envy, jealousy, frustration, anger or hatred. And while these feelings are unkind, they are normal.
Acceptance is and will always be the key to freedom—freedom from others and from one’s self. And it’s time to accept your imperfections, if only to be free from the things that have always held you back. It’s time to accept them, if only to be free from the thoughts that do you no good. It’s time to accept them, if only to be free from the one person who has always kept you locked up, hidden, away from the crowd who could actually love you: you.
It’s time to embrace the fact that you may get sad sometimes. Sadness is a human feeling and it’s normal. There are days that we recall memories that make us sad and there are days too when we just utterly feel sad for no reason. And that’s normal, too. During these days, the best thing to do is accept it. Welcome sadness with open arms. Cry if you need to cry. Let your tears be proof that you feel, and that you are real, and that the soul inside you is alive. Just because you’re feeling down doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with and inside you.
It’s okay to be sad as long as you don’t prolong it. Give it a day, or a week. Just never, ever let it consume you. After mourning, find something else that you like to do. Find something that you love to do. Go shopping. Attend a concert. Bungee jump. Check something off from your bucket list. Do something—anything—that you could love again. Do something that may not take away the sadness but at least heal it. With the help of the magic of time, who knows, what you’ll next learn to embrace is a brand new, stronger you.
It’s time to embrace your brokenness. It’s time to realize that you are both a flower and the roots of a tree. That you are a cool breeze and a dark cloud. That you are a butterfly and a dragon. That you are and will always be a combination of two things rolled into one body. It’s time to realize that being broken doesn’t have to mean being broken for a long period of time. Like being sad, the feeling of brokenness should not stay in you for the longer it stays the more it would destroy you.
You only use it to teach yourself a lesson and give yourself the experience of breaking apart, if only to prepare you for three more wars to be faced ahead. It’s time to realize that sometimes, broken is good. That messy, impressionistic painting can be beautiful. And while it may not always catch everyone’s eyes, there will always be someone who will see the beauty of the broken in you.
Your heart is not perfect. And neither is your soul. But the good news is: no one’s heart and soul is perfect. Every one of us has an issue. Everyone has problems. Every one of us is fighting their own battles. And it’s time to embrace the things that used to make you feel less of a heart, less of a soul, less of a person. It’s time to remind yourself that you are and will always be a work in progress. It’s time to realize that the broken in you is you, and there is no one else in this world who should accept, understand and love you more than yourself.