Everything Is Broken

Broken bottles broken plates
Broken switches broken gates
Broken dishes broken parts
Streets are filled with broken hearts
Broken words never meant to be spoken
Everything is broken.

"Everything Is Broken" ~ Bob Dylan
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Broken seems to be the theme for my recent life. First my thermostat on my heater did its little song and dance. Then my car decided to have its thousand dollar crisis. Now my big freestanding freezer in the laundry room has gone to its final reward. Objects live their lives, give out, need repair or replacing. Parts fail. Cracks develop. Flaws that were there all the time surface.

The material things are a nuisance, something to be worked around, absences to be endured. They aren't the things that take the joy from the days. It's brokenness on a larger scale that does that, broken relationships, broken ties.

I feel a little adrift right now, disconnected. I keep looking for a person at work who isn't there anymore. There's a great emptiness where she used to be, sort of a dullness. My biggest hope for her is that she's happy now, having a good time, peaceful. I miss her being around, though. There is a definite lack. It's strange how her absence has made me feel that I am somehow gone in some way, too. I don't know how to explain it. It's like some part of me got packed up, too, when she left. This is not a good explanation, and I know it, but it's the best I can give.

And then there's the thing I wrote about on Saturday....

I keep thinking there is going to be a day when I wake up and everything is repaired or whole. I'd settle for a day when there were no new emergencies. I don't think you get to wake up to that as a magic gift, though. Probably work and effort are involved. The big question is, though, how to do it. How does one fix all this stuff? I'm not so good at the fixing, to be honest. I'm much better at the avoiding, at the ignoring and pretending like nothing is wrong, at the praying that all things will be well instead of the hands-on maintenance.

There is no remedy for some of the things that are broken. They were cut off clean, over and done. They have been carried out, carried away; they are finished. Other things, well, they are broken, but I am not sure they wish to be repaired. I can't be sure one way or the other, and so I'm leaving them alone. That's all I know to do with them. I'm afraid that anything else will just destroy whatever shards may still stand if anything can be said to be left standing at all.

All I know is that as I sift through the jumble that's left, I get tired of bits and pieces. I miss the things that they used to be. Everything disappears with time, I guess. Some things, though, I really wish weren't gone.