Lately, for the past few months, I’ve been turning over how to explain to my ex why I can’t stay, and why I can’t try anymore. The metaphor I landed on is kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with lacquer mixed with gold. I always thought that was beautiful, and I remember them saying they did too. When our relationship broke, I believed we could mend it like kintsugi. It wouldn’t be the same as before, just different, a beautiful different piece of art. But here’s where it falls apart. He broke the vase, and I went to gather the pieces and asked him to help me mend them. Instead, he wanted to start over from scratch. I’d be on the floor collecting shards while he tried to set a brand new vase on top of the broken one, and then he’d get mad at me for picking up the pieces. So I’d stand up and try to admire the new vase surrounded by the old shards, and right when I started to adjust, he’d break the second vase too. Now it’s even harder. I can’t tell which shards belong to which vase, so I try to gather all of it and fix everything, hoping we can make something whole again. And again, he just wants to ignore his mistakes and start fresh, like the two broken vases and the love I had for them don’t exist. That pattern went on so long that now there are too many shards to set a new vase anywhere. I have to say, no more vases. We either fix this mess, or we throw it away, but we don’t replace it. He knows how much work it would take to fix it. He thought fixing one vase was too hard, so now he won’t even admit there are two. And I’m eternally optimistic, thinking if I work hard enough I can make something beautiful out of the wreckage. But this isn’t something I can do alone. Kintsugi takes patience, honesty, steady hands, and two people willing to sit in the mess. I can bring the gold and the time, but I can’t mend what he keeps pretending isn’t broken. So I’m saying no more new vases. We either sit down and repair what we shattered, piece by piece, and let it become something different and true, or we let it go and stop piling new glass on top of old wounds. I’m done sweeping around cuts on my feet while someone tells me the floor is clean. I loved what we had, and I could’ve loved what it became, but I won’t live in a room made of shattered things just because he refuses to look down. If you won’t do that, then I’m done trying to fix this by myself.
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