Broken Jars, Screaming Turtles, and Empty Promises

I looked like a bludgeoned warrior without any armaments. My hands were bloodied, my knees and legs gashed as well from falling from the top. My bones – well – felt like broken and almost my whole body had numbed. Nighttime was fast approaching; the cold winds of January nights still remind someone how cold Decembers could physically be. And obviously, with the cold night breezing icy winds on my battered and bloodied body? I wouldn’t make it tomorrow; I’ll have died by the time the sun rises.

Somehow, I felt like my prayers were answered; after about half an hour, I glued all of the pieces together. I realized it’s time to bring the fragile vessel home, intact, inside a container out of other people’s reach. As I was driving home, I began seeing the bigger picture: What caused the jar to slip out of my hands, fall down and crash into pieces? My carelessness is to blame. I had been a careless handler of things before, and try as I may with handling it with care, I shouldn’t have taken the vessel to the limits where it could be broken.

Somehow out of my folly, my carelessness prevailed. Sigh.

Now that everything has been glued altogether, it’s time to ask the look-ahead question: How can the vessel be prevented from breaking a second time around?

Simply put: Stop making your loved one expect for any castles in the air. Stop running about, telling your lady things she wanted to hear, and quickly forgetting everything about it. A fragile vase should never be exposed in the open again, considering it had been broken before. Having it glued together means one thing: It might the same to the eyes of beholders especially when painted brand-new, but a crack is still a crack. It may look as fragile as before, but in reality it’s actually ten times more fragile now than it was before. When shattered the second time around, the fragments may not be glued together anymore. If at first, it was already hard for me to glue the pieces back, the fragments might be smaller the next time the jar drops and breaks.

In other words, I’m currently safeguarding our relationship. Ground Zero it is – I’m trying to build an empire after a building collapsed and shattered into thousands of debris. The next time a collapse happens again, there will definitely be no more last chances.

Everything boils down to this: Go through hell-like ordeals – if needed – just to safeguard a relationship that’s starting to rebuild itself after a monumental failure and disappointment.