I was the cautious child, always the one to tiptoe, tread carefully, mind myself. I desired above all things to avoid getting physically hurt. My parents, spellbound by the "get rich" of real estate, flipped houses and therefore my playground as a child was a construction zone.

Being careful was the crux of everything we were taught. I was good at learning from other's mistakes, notably those of my siblings. I learned when my sister mistook discarded isolation for a misplaced duvet and rolled around in it, unaware of the head to toe rash she would incur. I learned when she yanked the hose off of the shop vac and experienced first hand the degree of heinous compounds that live within a wet dry vacuum. I learned when we watched an electric burner fade from glowing red to an innocuous black and falsely assumed it coolness with the palm of her hand.

There were still casualties. The back deck, newly finished and slick with rain. Without the level-headed hesitation I was known for, I peeled out onto the gleaming surface, quickly lost my balance and went right off the staircase, bumping each step on the way down. Playing tag through my mother's vegetable garden, already begrudgingly tended with a black thumb, I crunched down upon two consecutive planter markers, the feeble wood crunching to splinters beneath the skin of my sole.

As I grew, my clumsiness grew a greater identity in my life. At the time, which proved convenient for my self-esteem, it was thought to be the unfortunate outcome of puberty. My fingertips were slightly longer than they used to be, or that I assumed they were. I was slightly taller than I used to be. My hips wider, my toes more wayward. It felt as though I was literally daily standing up into something, bumping another off a tabletop, stubbing my toe, chipping my nails. I inspected the bruises of mistaken girth and the bumps of lack of care on a daily basis. It was assumed that I would grow out of it. That consolation was the only carrot dangling in front of my easily embarrassed frame of mind.

I became inordinately careful, hesitant. Never volunteering, under constant fear of embarrassment at the inevitable tripping, falling, misjudging of distance.

People stopped describing me as awkward, gangly, clumsy. It wasn't to say that I wasn't. But I just did a better job at hiding it. The majority of my cognitive energy was spent on appearing in control, effortless. It was anything but.

There was this creeping, persistent realization, just beyond my vision like a shadow or an impending  peripheral shot, that as much as I had tried to curb my clumsiness by hiding it, it hadn't disappeared but had rather been waiting with increasing impatience to reemerge with greater strength. It had been unsupervised and had, in that time, positioned itself poised to act.

I began to relax, somehow convincing myself that the elegant track record that I had personally engineered was enough to prove to myself I didn't need to be so careful. Unfortunately, this choice came at the time when I was graduating high school, exiting the sphere of a dependant, venturing out on my own. My first year of university, which I intended to be steadfast and elegant, emerging from my chrysalis a resplendent butterfly. The adage goes, "Sharks are born swimming" and I held that as the intent I was going to manifest.

Turns out I was born more like a calf, the eclipse of night with the crest of the sunrise still hours away, in the chill, slipping on my own afterbirth. Not a day of my first year of university went by without me being late for at least one of my classes, and by no less than fifteen minutes. I fell down stairs, rather publicly. I lost textbooks. I ran out of gas on the highway.

I stared out upon the expanse of the adult life that lay before me, knowing -hoping- that it could be different. I held it close to me, like a dirty secret. Tripping up stairs, forgetting to pay my bills on time, thus far I COULD keep it to myself.

Perhaps it was something karmic, trying to force change. Or maybe it was just grow up time.

The 'being able to hide it' abruptly ended. I fell in love, I married, I moved in. The breaking of mirrors, the shattering of glassware, the mishandling of my bills, being late and/or disorganized threw my marriage for a loop. I was not the wife I wanted to be. I was not the wife my husband expected. They were not simply my things, they were our things. It was not simply "no big deal" anymore. It became "this is why we can't have nice things".

Despite my best efforts, I sit here now, staring at the glass closet door that I had previously commented on, upon moving in to our new home, as to how much I liked them. I stare at a web of shatters that cluster in chaos at the base and climb higher upwards along the border all the way to the top.

Six years later.