The Bone That Never Quite Set Right

Have you ever broken a bone?

People ask it casually. Like it’s a campfire story or a badge of childhood. Skateboard accident. Bike crash. Snowboard trip gone wrong. Something clean. Dramatic. Contained.

I usually just nod and say yes. I don’t tell them which one.
Because the one I broke wasn’t the kind they put in a cast.

It was my collarbone.
Winter.
Years ago.

Not from anything noble or cinematic. I wasn’t saving someone. I wasn’t on a mountain or in a fight. I slipped on a patch of ice outside a laundromat, holding a bag of oranges.

I remember how the world tilted mid-fall. How everything slowed just long enough for me to register that I was alone. That no one saw. That I would have to get up by myself.

The fracture was small. Hairline, they called it. Just a crack. But for weeks I couldn’t lie on my side, couldn’t lift my arm without that dull ache pulsing like memory under the skin.

Funny thing is, it healed. Like they said it would.

But not quite right.

To this day, when the weather shifts—when it rains in the wrong direction or the wind carries too much history—I feel it again. A ghost pain. A reminder that healing doesn’t always mean untouched. Sometimes it means changed.

And I think we all have bones like that.

Not literal ones.
But the kind you can’t point to on an x-ray.

The trust that shattered when someone didn’t come back.
The confidence that cracked under too many late-night self-doubts.
The quiet part of you that once felt safe in the world, until it didn’t.

We get up. We walk again. We smile.
But we carry the ache.
Invisible. Unspoken.
Present.

And maybe the real question isn’t have you ever broken a bone?
Maybe it’s what have you learned to live with?

The ache that teaches you to slow down.
The fracture that makes you more careful with others.
The healed part that still twinges, reminding you where you’ve been.

That day outside the laundromat, my bag split open. Oranges rolled out onto the sidewalk like coins in a rigged slot machine. I remember chasing them with one arm pressed to my ribs, laughing—not because it was funny, but because it wasn’t.

Because sometimes all you can do is laugh, gather what you can, and carry the rest differently.

Years later, I still reach for my shoulder when the sky feels off.

And I remember: healing doesn’t mean forgetting.
It means knowing your limits.
Honoring the crack.
And walking forward anyway.

Even if you carry a little more weather than before.