Cracked Porcelain

I remember the day the floor swallowed me whole.
Not literally, of course.
But the ground gave way,
shifted under the weight
of a life I wasn't sure how to carry.
My mother's antique porcelain doll,
the one with the vacant blue eyes
and the hand-painted rose on her cheek,
lay shattered on the kitchen tiles.

She’d been perched on the shelf for decades,
a silent sentinel of our family history.
Now, just fragments.

I cried harder over that doll
than I had over anything else that week.
More than the eviction notice,
more than the gnawing hunger,
more than the silence on the other end of the phone
when I called my father.

It felt like a mirror.
Like all the carefully constructed pieces of me,
smashed into a million tiny, jagged edges.

They said, "Time heals all wounds."
But time just passes.
It's the *doing* that heals.
The slow, painstaking work
of picking up the pieces.

I tried gluing the doll back together.
My mother watched, her eyes soft,
her hands gnarled from years of hard labor.
"It'll never be the same," she said,
her voice a low hum.
"But that doesn't mean it's ruined."

The glue lines were thick and clumsy.
The cracks were visible, permanent.
One of the doll's blue eyes stared slightly off-center.

But she stood.

She stood, a testament to the fact
that broken things can still be beautiful.
That imperfections are not flaws,
but stories etched into our very being.

Like that doll, I’ve been pieced back together
a thousand times.
Each heartbreak a new crack.
Each failure a missing shard.
Each betrayal a rough edge that cuts when you get too close.

I carry the scars,
the visible lines of where I’ve been broken.
I don't try to hide them anymore.
They are proof.
Proof that I survived.
Proof that I learned to gather the fragments,
find the glue, and rebuild.

Sometimes I look in the mirror
and see a patchwork of experiences.
A mosaic of joy and sorrow,
strength and vulnerability.

I am not the smooth, unblemished porcelain
I once thought I should be.
I am cracked, imperfect, and undeniably real.

And I hold water.
I still hold love,
I still hold hope,
I still hold the capacity
to feel deeply,
to forgive freely,
to rise again
no matter how many times
the floor tries to swallow me whole.

Because even cracked porcelain,
still serves a purpose.
It holds the stories,
the memories,
the essence of a life lived,
fully and imperfectly,
with a resilience that surprises even me.
And that, I think, is beautiful.
That is strength.
That is survival.