There is a pencil on my desk.
To you, it is probably just a pencil.
To me, it knows more about my life than most people ever will.
Every night, I pick it up and write.
It has felt my hand shake when life became heavy.
It knows the storms that lived inside my quiet head.
It has written dreams I was afraid to speak about, failures I never shared, and thoughts that belonged only to me.
In some strange way, this pencil carries pieces of who I am.
But I can take that pencil and snap it in half.
Just like that.
It is broken.
And perhaps life has made you feel the same way.
There are moments when something inside us simply breaks.
A failure.
A rejection.
A heartbreak.
A loss.
Or sometimes, years of carrying things nobody else could see.
We look at ourselves afterward and think I am not who I used to be.
And maybe that is true.
Maybe you will never be that person again.
But look at the pencil.
Most people would see two broken pieces and throw them away.
Instead, sharpen the broken ends.
Now something strange happens.
You don’t have zero pencils.
You have two.
The pencil was broken.
But its ability to write was not.
And perhaps that is something worth remembering.
Life may break parts of you.
It may change you.
It may leave scars that never completely disappear.
But being broken does not mean being finished.
You don’t always have to rebuild yourself into the person you were before. Maybe that person belonged to an earlier chapter. Pick up what remains. Sharpen the new edges. And discover what this version of you can write.
Because nobody knows every battle that brought you here.
Nobody knows every night you struggled quietly.
Nobody knows every time you almost stopped but continued.
You do.
So don’t spend your life waiting for the world to recognise your story.
You were there for all of it.
The pain.
The failures.
The rebuilding.
The becoming.
Perhaps the person who survived your entire story deserves something from you too, your recognition.
A broken pencil can still write.
And so can you.
Pick up the pieces.
Sharpen the edges.
Write the next chapter.
