Kintsugi - the art of mending

I was recently sent this picture by someone. At the time I was in hospital and in truth, it meant nothing to me other than flippancy. To me it made light of my suffering. I never asked for cracks; I never wanted a broken mind. I didn't want to be repaired,  I wanted to be perfect. 

In all honesty, there have been many time in the past few years that I felt broken beyond repair. It's a scary feeling.

However this Japanese idea of kintsikuroi hit me last night when I went to play a game of netball. I used to  really enjoy this sport and was at one time quite good.  However, due to lengthy hospital stays, rapid weight gain and lack of confidence, I dropped out of the game. 

Last night I decided to go for it. It was a big step for me. However, I realised I was going to have to wear my short sleeve T-shirt (we play inside and it gets pretty warm!). But this would show my obvious 'cracks' - the places on my body that I have inflicted harm to myself when I have felt so low that this was the only way of releasing the pain.

In my most recent admission to hospital I struggled to keep myself from hurting myself . I felt such pain and despair that the only answer was hurting myself.  The scars from this period will never leave me. They may fade, but it is unlikely they will ever disappear; forever reminding me of my weaknesses.

Someone at netball asked me if I was ok last night.  They had seen my scars and were a little shocked, possibly thinking I had had an accident or surgery of some sort. It's hard to be able to explain what these scars are to those who have never been in this place before and I just smiled at her and said that the scars were fine and so was I. I could hardly say that they were my own fault and that I had inflicted them on myself.

Now I'm not the kind of person who wants to glamorise mental illness. I don't want to say that these scars are 'beautiful' or 'battle wounds'. That's way too cliche and in fact feels quite disturbing. I will never be proud of what I have done to myself or what I have been through. I may never be able to accept the difficulties I have faced particularity in the past couple of years. I will try however to accept the harm as a mending process. I wouldn't mend myself with gold -  I don't deserve that. I will however do my utmost best to look after the rest of my body to stop the wounds reopening.

For those that feel that they can never be fixed, please try remember that there is no 'fixed', there is no 'perfect' or 'right'. We have to keep muddling through somehow and I hope that one day we will realise what we were fighting for.

R x