Rightly or wrongly, I have always considered myself broken. Not normal, because I am not as others are.

This is a feeling that in the last few years I have wanted to challenge. I want to feel like my own friend, I want to like myself.

In conversation with Kev before Christmas about the frustrations of how the seasons and the cold affected my limbs, how they became less able to respond to the messages my brain was so desperately sending to keep us all going along safely.

“I wish it didn’t have to be such hard work.” I told him sadly for the millionth time this lifetime.

Kev stroked my back, smiling at me kindly.

“But you know what?” he said “Your brain is marvellous.”

I stared at him oddly. “It’s literally damaged, broken.”

“Exactly.”

What?

Seeing my confusion, he smiled again. “When something is broken, we usually throw it away. But we’re not going to do that, so your brain…. has found ways to do everything. Not well maybe, but it hasn’t given up. It doesn’t let itself be broken. It’s just something broken… that works anyway.”

Put like that, my heart swelled. With love for him and for the first, true time, for myself. Because I could see that he was right. Broken didn’t have to mean disdain and rejection. It could be marvellous because I was doing it anyway. I have been my whole life.