I felt so much, that I started to feel nothing. Idiotic. To feel this way about the accidental breaking of a cup; a $7 recycled glass mug with a stylized sun on the front.

Some (traumatized) individuals maul their experiences into eternal catastrophes. Nothing will ever go right, nothing will ever last and nothing will ever be special. Suddenly the avalanche of archived experiences collapses under the weight of the broken glass and the misplaced rings and the yet to be lost pointy toed boots. One experience hooks into another, fabricating a seminal new reality. A reality where nothing is worthy of favoritism not even you.

WAIT.  Back to the present.

And hope. HOPE.

Somewhere, sometime, someone will be in the exact location to replace the unthinkably broken mug. By some ill-defined, clandestine feat of interconnectivity that person is my son…in this place…at this time. Consider the possibility.

Physical items are replaceable; wispily waiting to be rehomed. Individuals stand by to disseminate their altruistic deeds.

“Sure Mom, I’ll get you another mug.” And so he does.

It strikes me that trauma, collectively and individually uses this same methodology. Recognition begets catastrophe morphs to awareness creates new neuropathways.

I sweep the shards of  this mug into buy community of shards, sorted and categorized by individual items. I notice in the gallon bag the shards mean less, pull less, hurt less.

37 hours later I am reunited with my new mug and the oceanic grin of an adolescent who knows he is owed one. A bit one.

The sun emblem is not quite the same but similar. The hand feel is a bit lighter. I pour my single origin Ethiopian coffee into the mug. It feels familiar. It feels new. Simultaneously.

It is a mug, you are allowed to grieve it–and it can be replaced.