This is one of the short pieces I wrote for my book The Truth Is…
I never had any intention of releasing this outside of the book but it’s something that I just keep coming back to time and time again so I wanted to share this piece with you today in the hope that it might help to provide a light for you as it once did for me.
It's titled Turkish Lamps…
The wrong person can walk into your life so quietly, and feel so right in the beginning.
They can give you all of the right words and signals at exactly the right time, and make it feel as though they were made just for you.
Yet, they’ll bring with them the fiercest storms you’ve ever known.
And in the end instead of feeling like they were made for you, you wish that you'd never even met them at all in the first place.
Sometimes in the end, the most painful part isn’t even trying to let go of this person, it’s realising just how much of yourself you sacrificed and lost for someone who never really saw you.
It's difficult to imagine how all of the broken pieces that they've left you with, can possibly ever be put back together again.
But believe it or not, those shattered pieces mean you now have the opportunity to create a new work of art; something that's better than before, and something so extraordinarily beautiful in the form of a beautiful new mosaic.
About six years ago I took a real liking to Turkish lamps and Turkish candle holders; the kind that are made from broken glass pieces and turned into a mosaic pattern where the colours beam all around the room.
I didn’t realise the significance at the time, but I fell in love with these beautiful colourful lamps and candle holders about the same time that the wrong person entered my life; little did I know at the time just how meaningful these lamps would end up becoming later on.
Because this person did break me, in fact they completely decimated every single part of my life; and in the end I was simply left to pick up all of the broken pieces from the mess they left behind while they just simply moved on without any apology, accountability, or remorse for the damage that they know they had brought into my life and caused.
But each time I look at these Turkish lamps now, I am reminded of the beauty that broken pieces can hold; I see all of the colours, and I see the most beautiful light gleaming out of them and spilling out across the room, none of which could ever have existed without the broken pieces.
Sometimes it pays to remind ourselves that the broken pieces are really the raw materials for who we become next.
When you pick up all of those pieces, you have the chance to rebuild with intention, and to shape a life and a self that no one can shatter ever again; except this time, you're not starting from the same place again as before, because this time you know everything of what not to do.
Sometimes the most beautiful versions of us are the ones that come to life after we had to piece everything back together; just like those Turkish lamps became a work of art after starting life as just a plain old piece of glass.
You are more than how someone left you.
You are not the broken pieces of the person that someone once shattered, broke, or destroyed; you are the beautiful new person you are now becoming, you are your own work of art.
~ Mark Smith