Looking for the Edge Pieces

I've always been someone who can handle a lot of pieces.

Actually, I think I like having a lot of pieces.

Give me the 1,000 piece puzzle. The puzzle that will take up your entire table and stay there for days. The puzzle that you have to stare at hundreds of pieces that look almost identical and somehow figure out where each one belongs. I like complicated things. I like having a lot on my plate. I'm good at keeping track of moving parts, solving problems, making plans, changing those plans when something doesn't fit work, and eventually making everything fit into place.

Somewhere along the way, I learned to do that with myself too.

It took me years to put my own puzzle together. There were pieces of myself that took a long time to understand. Pieces from my childhood, motherhood, and marriage. Pieces of my work, my trauma, my faith, my dreams, and the person who I have worked so hard to become. It wasn't necessarily an easy puzzle, but eventually, I knew it. I knew what the picture on the front of the box was supposed to look like. I knew where things went. I knew how to hold all of those pieces together. If one or two fell out of place, I could easily reach for them and put them back.

But then, the puzzle was knocked off the table. It wasn't me who knocked it off and it was not an accident either. Somebody who knew how precious my puzzle was and who knew how long it took to build and who knew how challenging it was to put together chose to destroy it. They looked at its' beauty and decided to scramble it, bend the pieces, flip them over, and scatter them on the ground beside the table. They didn't care about the aftermath.

It feels like I had finally built something that made sense, and now I am sitting on the floor surrounded by all of the pieces. Except this time, I am not the one who dumped the puzzle out. But somehow, I am the one who has to put it back together and even that is not the right description.

If all of the pieces were exactly the same, maybe I could just rebuild what I had before. It would probably be exhausting and painful and unfair, but at least I would know what I was rebuilding. I would also know that it was worth rebuilding. Instead, I am looking at pieces of a life I thought I knew and realizing some of them aren't even what I thought I knew.

Some are flipped upside down, and I have to turn them over one by one, before I can even understand what I am looking at. Some pieces I thought belonged on the outside might actually belong somewhere in the middle. Things that I thought were firmly part of my picture suddenly don't fit. There are pieces I remember facing one direction, but now they looking completely different. Some have broken bits or bent pieces.

Is that what betrayal does?

This doesn't hurt only because of what happened. It reaches backward too. It makes you pick up pieces of your own life and examine them again and again. The memories you created that were soaked with lies. Moments you thought you understood. Pieces that were beautiful when you were placing them, but underneath they were molding and destroying the beauty from behind.

Suddenly I am turning everything over in my hands and wondering if this was ever how it looked? Where does this belong now? Did these pieces ever exist before?

I am disoriented. I am not just trying to recover from a painful event. I am trying to understand what the original image even was and who it belonged to in the first place.

While I feel frozen in time and while I sit on the ground surrounded by scattered puzzle pieces, life moves around me. I am one in a crowd of a 100. Is this what He means when He says He will leave the 99?

I am still a mother. There are still little people running around me who need me to be "Mommy" while I'm sitting here surrounded. They need meals and clean clothes and comfort and consistency. They need answered questions, shoes found, diapers changed, arguments broken up, rooms cleaned, and a steady world.

I am still a wife. I am trying to understand what it means to love someone while also being hurt but choices they make. I'm trying to figure out which pieces can be mended or replaced, which ones are permanently altered, which pieces belong to me, and which pieces I should have never had to carry in the first place.

I am still a business owner. Clients still need answers. Sessions still need to be photographed. Galleries still need to be edited. Messages need responses. Bills still exist. Money still has to come in. My business doesn't know that my puzzle has been scattered. It does not care. The electric company does not care.

I do have people. I have an incredible group of women around me who have shown up and sat down in the mess beside me. They can help me look for the puzzle pieces. They can remind me to eat or sleep or breathe. They can listen while I Pick up the same pieces for the 100th time and say "I still don't understand this." They can remind me of where some old pieces went. But there are pieces that they simply cannot put back for me.

Right now, I tell them, "I think I am looking for the edge pieces."

When you start a huge puzzle, you don't usually grab a random piece from the middle of the mess and expect yourself to know exactly where it belongs. You have to turn the pieces over first. You sort them. You make little piles. You look for colors and patterns you recognize. Sometimes you may find two or three pieces that obviously belong together, so you connect them even though you have absolutely no idea where that little cluster will eventually belong. You might be able to find a clue on the front of your box, but my box is gone. It was ripped up and tossed aside. The original box, I don't even think was the right picture to begin with.

Mostly, you look for the edge pieces. You need a border. I need a border. I need somewhere to begin. Maybe before I can find those edges, I have to turn pieces right side up. Maybe that is what I am trying to do right now. I'm reaching through this enormous pile in front of me, pulling out pieces and turning them over, one by one. Some of them hurt to look at. Some confuse me. Some are exactly what I remember. Some are broken or bent. Some are moldy or faded. Some are lost. Then some, I pull out and see the piece with its straight edge and think "Okay, I know this one. It goes right here."

Maybe motherhood is one of those pieces. Maybe my work is another. Maybe my faith, friendships, values, boundaries, or getting through today are pieces of the b order. Maybe there are little clusters in the middle that I can put together now, even if I have no idea where they'll eventually belong. I don't know yet. That is hard for me.

I am used to being the person who can show the box to everyone and guide them where their pieces might need to go. I am the person who knows what to do next. I can carry others through crisis. I am used to carrying a lot and being capable of carrying it. I'm used to being the solver of puzzles. But now, I can't see the picture. I can't think. My brain is unorganized. My heart is shattered. My body is worn. My eyes are blurry.

I find it unfair to have to rebuild something that I did not destroy. I did not knock this puzzle off the table. But I am the one sitting here with the pieces. I am the one stuck here on the ground. I am the one who has to put it back together, whether I want to or not. I have to keep being a mother. I have to try to keep my business alive. I have to figure out how to get the bills paid. I have to process a refund. I have to outsource editing and cover the costs. I have to be sorry for failing my clients. I can't be the one for my friends to lean on anymore.

Somewhere in all of this, there is another piece I have to figure out, and it might be the one that I now understand the least. Me. I spent years figuring out who I was and where I fit into the life I had built, and now I am looking at that piece differently too. Actually, I can't even find that piece right now, because it is absolutely buried in the mess of pieces. Where is that piece? Where do I fit into this puzzle. Am I the same piece? Will I even recognize that piece when my eyes come across it? Will it be so distorted, broken, or bent that it doesn't fit at all anymore? I don't know.