Broken

“See the lonely girl, out on the weekend, tryin’ to make it pay. She can't relate to joy, oh-oh she tries to speak and can't begin to say…”

-        Lady Gaga, intro to “Fooled Me Again (Honest Eyes)” (unreleased)

“I'm perfectly imperfect, you know? It's like…and we all are. And we all have our things that we go through.”

-        Lady Gaga, interview with Oprah Winfrey on the WW “2020 Vision Tour”, January 4, 2020

When I was a little girl, I spent a lot of time at my grandparents' house. Like…a lot. Entire weeks during the summer. Lots of weekends throughout the year. Days off from school. My grandmother was basically my primary caregiver after Mom went back to work full time when I was three, so she was a huge influence in my life. She loved art, music, and books—anything creative, and she passed that along to me. When I expressed an interest in writing, she bought new ink ribbons, gave me her old manual typewriter, sat me down at her dining room table, and told me to go ahead and write. Technically, you can blame her for this blog's existence—and if you're one of my nearest and dearest friends, also my wordy text messages. Sorry, not sorry.

But I digress.

One thing I remember well from my childhood is my grandmother's collection of music boxes, which she allowed me to play with whenever I wanted. My favorite of these was an antique, wooden music and trinket box that played “Here Comes the Bride”.

Well…it was supposed to, anyway. You see, the melody was nearly unrecognizable by the time I first got my grubby paws on it. Something in the mechanism had broken or been damaged years before, and it sounded more like a jumbled mess of tinny “dings” and “clinks” with just a few identifiable notes mixed in. The box itself was scratched and nicked from years of rough handling, the baby blue paint was faded and chipping off, and the ceramic medallion on the lid, a picture of a  dancing couple in 18^th century dress, had been broken, glued back together, and stuck crookedly back on top of the lid who knows how many times.

I loved that music box. I wish I still had it, but I don't know where it ended up. Most likely, my grandfather, who was much less sentimental than his wife, finally got rid of it after she passed away. But in general, broken things, even things that most people would have considered beyond repair or not worth the effort and tossed into the trash, were still treasured in that house.

Not all broken things are trash to be discarded and forgotten. Sometimes, a little glue and a little TLC is all that is needed to hold the pieces together, so that it can be kept and treasured by the right person.

The same can be said of broken people.

No. I don't mean broken in the sense that they're not good enough as they are. I don't mean that their problems, whatever they might be, can (or even should) be “fixed” once and for all, and the bad stuff will magically go away, and everything will be all better, and no one will have to deal with it anymore, la la la la la…that's not how any of this works.

When I say “broken” people, I mean the ones who have big, heavy baggage. The ones who have been hurt and now have a hard time trusting, or believing that they are worthy of love and better treatment. The ones who look in the mirror and hate what they see, or who cannot bear to look at all. The ones who carry the weight of past choices and mistakes with them everywhere they go. The ones who endure physical or mental health issues that make just lifting their head from the pillow a feat that is entirely beyond their power at times. The ones whose highest “up” days would seem almost unbearably sad to someone who didn't have to face the same daily challenges, and whose lowest “down” days would leave most of us curled up in the fetal position, weeping in a dark corner and wondering how anyone could ever manage to get through that and somehow keep going. The ones who desperately want light, love, and happiness in their lives but have known only shadows, loneliness, and sadness for so long that they’ve given up hope of finding it for themselves in any form that will last. The ones who are “strong” and suffer in silence because no one has been around to help them through the bad times before, so they don't know any other way to be, and they don't know how to ask for someone to help them now. The ones who throw everything they have into making others smile, laugh, and experience all of the joy that they can't feel.

Now, don't misunderstand me; I’m not suggesting that all that is broken (or all who are broken) can be held together with a bit of glue, literally or figuratively. Broken can be dangerous sometimes, too. Like a glass dropped and shattered in the sink, or the remains of a car in the aftermath of a crash, where you've already had to be cut out with the jaws of life, and all that's left is a twisted heap of rusted metal—the jagged edges more likely to make you bleed than not, and impossible to put back together in order to make it work the same as it used to. Sure…maybe someone who makes mosaic art could turn the shards of glass into something lovely, or the twisted wreckage could be salvaged for usable parts and materials. But that's not the same kind of brokenness I'm talking about here. Abusive is a different kind of broken. Violent is a different kind of broken. You get the picture, I hope.

A couple of months ago now, I read an opinion piece that someone wrote about A Star Is Born. One of the only things I retained from this article (the overall tone of which made me so angry that I stopped reading partway through), is that the author said the storyline was awful because Ally should never have ended up with, let alone stayed with, Jack because of his addiction and mental health problems. She’d have been better off without him, and basically she was stupid for not steering clear of him. And okay, I get it—her life would have certainly been less complicated, arguably freer from drama, and frankly more normal, if only she’d refused to have that first drink with him after her performance in the drag bar. If she’d declined to get to know him. If she’d never fallen in love with and married him. If she’d decided that his broken pieces were too far gone to bother with, instead of recognizing the brokenness, then gathering the pieces closer and reaching for the glue anyway, hoping for the best.

True, Jack and Ally's story did not include a “happily ever after” ending. The glue wasn’t enough to keep Jack’s broken pieces together long-term, and Ally surely bled when they finally fell apart for the last time. But between the two of them, they tried. He was worth it to her. He obviously thought she was worth trying to keep himself together, too, even if he lost his grip on the pieces in the end. And anyone who's seen the movie has to admit, what they had and what they created during their time together, in spite of the visible cracks, was beautiful.

Broken is still beautiful to the right eyes and the right heart. Broken is worth picking up whatever pieces you can, grabbing the glue, and sticking them back together again…and again…and again, maybe every day for as long as you live—never entirely “fixed” and just like new, but holding on in spite of the cracks.  Perfectly imperfect.

Broken is worthy of love. Like Jack and Ally. Like my grandmother's music box. And like you, Little Monster, if any of this feels like I'm writing about you.

Maybe I am writing about you. I know I'm writing about me.

Love and Paws Up Always.