Broken...

 

I've seen a lot of broken people on TV lately.  Characters on trashy dramas, British crime series & even reality shows.  Sometimes damaged or hurt people are confused for the broken.   But the damaged & hurt faced trauma or hardship as adults.  The truly broken's entire childhood was a series of abuse, suffering, neglect, deprivement, abandonment...  A damaged adult might recover, the broken don't.

My roomie asked me a simple question.  Did I love our new kitten.  I didn't really answer.  I disdain that word sometimes.  Love isn't a thing I really get, ever really felt & definitely do not understand.  I can be very attached to people & things.  I can care greatly for them.  I can be hurt when they're gone.  But I don't know if that's love.  I don't know if that's something, I'm really capable of.  Maybe that's the case with  a lot of aromantics.  

I am among the broken.  We tend to find others.  Sometimes we get around those who aren't broken.  It doesn't tend to go well for either side.  They think we can be fixed or just get over it.  We tend think they're naive & someday will fall hard.  

The broken can try to support other broken people.  It doesn't always go well.  We're trying to put a puzzle together missing pieces.   Neither side is solid & both are fraying.  

Broken people are like zombies, we can spread out breakage.  To the innocent, seeing the breakage in process can be a horror show.  Trying to understand a broken can be overwhelming & many have to leave.  Children of the broken are almost guaranteed to be broken.  It's generational & contagious.   There is no real cure except avoidance.

I do my best to look after the stray cats.  It's not much, but it's what I can do.  They didn't ask to be out there scared, hungry & alone.   But broken people can only hold on for so long before we break again.  Many of us would love to give the charity we never received.  But we can't.  We don't have the resources or the reserves.  It just reminds us how futile it all is & how broken we are.

I do care for the kitten.  I don't know if I love anything.  I thought I did as a kid, maybe I even did then.  But now, that's an emotion as distant & weird to me as any sci-fi alien.  I don't get it.  I'll do what I can for the kitten, but I will get annoyed & frustrated.  I'll try to help those around me, but I can't do much.  I've spent most my life around other broken people & they could only ever do so much.  It's never enough.

To the "normal" people that have been in my life.  Some of you ran away because my life was too much.  Some of you were arrogant enough to try to fix me.  Most of you were foul tempered beasts sniping from some perceived high ground.  You may not have been broken, but that didn't mean you were good people or better than me.  It just meant you were vile, judgy and hateful.  Maybe that was your kind of breakage.

Sorry for the downer post. 

Take care.

Cya...