Rough Edges

I found two lines in an old notebook, dated March 2014.

Afraid of my own rough edges. Admit I struggle and would struggle to do it on my own.

There was no paragraph around them, no resolution. The confession was written small at the bottom of a page and then left alone. I remember the time I wrote it in. I was leaning towards becoming someone steadier than I was back in 2014, and the rough edges felt like evidence against me.

The parts of me that didn’t sit smoothly, that caught on people and on situations, I wanted to move through cleanly. I thought maturity meant erasing them out of my life, becoming someone with nothing left to hide.

I was wrong about the edges, as I liken it to walking into a living room that celebrates age. Your eye goes straight to the old table, the antique that has stood the test of time, the wear and the rough edge on it. That is where its beauty and character sits. Not in the thing that is purely clean, not a speck out of place. The roughness I was ashamed of was the same roughness that makes a piece worth keeping.

But it’s the second line I keep returning to. Would struggle to do it on my own. I remember I wrote it as an admission, the way you own up to something. We often teach boys that the stronger they become, the less they should need anyone, as if it were some badge of honour.

If you watch anyone learn something hard, a movement, a new skill, a craft, a time of grief, and you’ll see they don’t do it all alone. Usually there is someone a little further ahead showing them a way. And before long, someone just behind, learning from how they carry themselves. That is not weakness. That is how we pass things on.

So the man who wrote those two lines. I’d tell him now, if I could. You weren’t writing down what was wrong with you. You were writing down what you were afraid to admit. You had rough edges, and you needed other people. Both were true and neither made you weak.