You Can't Save A Damsel If She Likes The Distress
I'm at my best when my heart is in pain.
getty Maybe I like being broken. In fact, I know I do. I relish breaking apart because I like seeing what's in between the breaks.
There's something magical about the mess because there's an intrinsic beauty in chaos. It glitters and shines brighter than any light.
Quite frankly, I think I was born broken. Not to say I didn't come from a loving home or have a fond childhood; that's the opposite of what I mean.
I was born broken because the world knew it had too much to offer me.
So every cracked sliver of my being was meant to be room for magic. I was meant to be a lover — a lover of the world — and collect magic along the way, especially the type others would overlook because everything can be magical depending on your perception.
Go ahead. Tell I'm too romantic, too naive, and too sensitive for my own good.
Yet I'm at my best when my heart is in pain. The more I break, the more I feel and the more room there is for magic to brew.
And if you think about it, distress is the reason why my tears sparkle and why you see stars in some people's eyes and not others. Because some of us have a little bit more magic in us, simply because we have more space to put it in.
So sure, I'm delicate in the way my heart beats and breaks for the world, but I'm stronger because of what's between the cracks.
You can call me weak and say I need saving, but trust me when I tell you I don't need you to save me.
And I certainly don't need you to change me, edit me, or think that I need to be tamed.
I don't want you to take my magic away. I've been collecting it for years at every happy ending and at the final chord of all the sad songs. I've been treasuring last words and lost smiles.
It's a shame no one ever notices the beauty that exists between the pain.
I've been saving the dust that people leave when their hearts break because it's filled with love someone else couldn't take. I've been stockpiling all my childish dreams that I still believe in as an adult. I've been saving tears because they've inspired me to survive, to be here.
I've been amassing all this magic that's usually forgotten, and filling all those little vacant parts of my heart and soul.
And please, forgive me if you think I'm stealing — I'm merely hoarding things that people leave and mistreat so I can remind you: Madness can be beautiful if you want it to.
I fear less about breaking apart and more about having no room to store these charmed remains. I panic less about falling in love and more about what I'll find on that fall.
I don't get scared about not finding true love because that's the whole point of this, you know: to bend, we had to break, to make room for someone else to stay.
In truth, I'm madly in love with the world and have a complicated relationship with the universe. The world brought me in broken, and I have no intention of leaving it whole.
So forgive me for not constantly searching for my other half. I'm many, many different parts of broken hearts and unfinished love stories.
I like being broken; it makes life so much more of an adventure.
You can't save a damsel if she likes the distress, and I love this chaotic mess of a life.
Sonya Matejko is a writer, speaker, storyteller and yoga teacher. Her work has appeared in publications like Elite Daily, Huffington Post, Thought Catalog, Forbes, and others. Visit her website for more.