Stress Fracture

Once, when I was young, I broke my arm the doctor called it a stress fracture. I always thought that was a silly name for it because stress couldn't cause that much pain, but oh god was I wrong! The pressure of work and school and responsibilities to friends and family and even perfect strangers in the street (because we all know how hard that polite smile is to dredge up after only 3 hours of nightmare fuelled sleep) can put so much stress on a person that they fracture. They shatter, somewhere deep inside something snaps and the crack radiates outwards: like when a hammer hits a television screen and the glass shatters at 3000 meters per second, it appears instantaneous, though in reality it's much more like the steady erosion of the sea on the cliff face, picking apart at the very foundations of what holds the whole thing together, until there is nothing left to hold the rest up.

That's what happened to m:, those missed deadlines and forced "good morning"s and scraped knees all built up and I snapped, clean down the middle. So now I'm broken beyond repair because when I broke something was lost, the cement that held me together dried up and now none of the pieces will stay in place. I suffered from a stress fracture to the heart, or maybe even the soul, whatever it was its irreversible. The only hope a half-cure called "love" foreign and terrifying, I have to decide if I want to risk the side effects...