How many brushes have you had in your lifetime? Probably not something that you've ever really thought about. This is a story about my brush. It's nothing fancy. Nothing special. In fact, it was a dollar store purchase. Most people would have just replaced it once it became old and broken, not try to fix it or repair it. Especially if the brush was only a dollar.
This brush became a symbol of hope and trying to me. Somedays all I could do was get up, look in the mirror, fight through the tears, and the voices telling me that I would be better off dead, then to continue to be a burden to my friends and family, and brush my hair, with this dollar store hairbrush.
One day my hair had become really badly knotted and tangled, because I hadn't been out of bed for 3 days. I ripped large chunks of hair out each time I passed the brush through my hair. On one of the passes, it broke in two. Much like the grappling depression that I was facing at that moment, I broke along with it. A simple, not special, dollar store hairbrush. Half of it in my hand, half of it clinging to the knot that overpowered it. As if I needed a reason to cry, and break down, I cried harder than I had allowed myself to in many, many years. I was angry at myself for the lack of self-care, the lack of being able to pull myself out of the depressive spiral I was in, and the lack of control I had in my life.
I pulled the piece out of my hair, and cleaned both halves, and decided that I was going to try and fix it. That if I could not fix myself, I was going to fix the one thing that I could. So, like a monkey doing a math problem, I looked at the two halves and fixated on how to make my brush whole again. I thought, maybe crazy glue. That did not work. Then I had the idea of using zip ties. The very same dollar store that I purchased the brush at years prior, I had bought some zip ties. So, I fused the two halves together and put the first zip tie on it, then the second. I added 2 more. I cut the ends, and walla it worked like new again. I cautiously pulled the brush through my hair, and it didn't snag on the zip ties. It felt sturdy and improved. This unremarkable, nothing special, old, dollar store hairbrush.
Call it delusional, call it grasping at straws, or whatever. But it gave me hope. It spurred me on. I might not have been able to fix myself all at once. But I could take small steps to fix parts of myself until I felt closer to whole, rather than being in a hole. The Japanese have an art form called Kintsugi which is the joining of two broken halves of a plate or bowl with gold. Creating a beautiful wholly new item with unique designs and becomes a work of art.
So each day, I worked on small piece of myself as I could. I dedicated sometime to my book, and sometime to my house, or my own personal care. A broken, now repaired, nothing special, dollar store hairbrush, became my own inside joking promise to always do my best, no matter how broken I was, I would keep trying. I would keep moving forward. Sometimes little things can be the biggest help, like a simple, nothing special, dollar store hairbrush.
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