The Broken Pencil

The Sound from One Snap

I’ve had hundreds of pens in my life. Fancy ones. Cheap ones. Inked, digital, erasable. Every color under the sun. But there’s only one writing tool I remember like a scar. A pencil. Broken in half. By my own hand.

Not Eating Glue

I was in kindergarten. A calm, oddly serious child. While other kids were drawing suns with smiley faces, I was busy thinking about how small the Earth actually was—how laughably finite it felt once you understood the scale of the universe. I was already contemplating Aristotle and Socrates while kids were eating glue. I knew I was different, not in some tortured-genius way, but in that I genuinely didn’t find most things worth reacting to.

Then My Mother

(Just realized today is Mother’s Day.)

She’s the one person who’s ever really gotten under my skin. The kind of woman who started matchmaking the moment she found out she was having a girl. The kind of woman who told me, at four years old, to wear peach lipstick—pink would be wrong—when I grew up. Who always had advice ready, even when I didn’t ask. Especially when I didn’t ask. Who never once asked how my work was going, but always had something to say about my hair. The one who told me I was ignorant, from the comfort of her six-passport-stamp experience. The one who made me change to the other red dress before going out, as if I was her project to be tweaked.

And what hurt wasn’t the controlling—it was that I thought she knew better. She’s my mother. Isn’t she supposed to?

That day, she pushed one button too many. I can’t even remember what it was. Something about how I should sit. Or speak. Or exist.

The Breaking Point

Now, I’m not the type to throw tantrums. I never wrote on walls. Never slammed doors. Never broke plates. But in that moment, I grabbed my favorite pencil and snapped it in half, staring her down like it was a final declaration.

I don’t think she flinched.

And honestly, I’m still not sure if she knew exactly how to push me there… or if she didn’t know me at all.

What stayed with me wasn’t the fight. It was the pencil. That I destroyed something that mattered to me just to prove a point to someone who wouldn’t hear it anyway.

More Than Graphite

I’ve never cared much about money or status symbols. But I care about the things I write, and the things I draw. That pencil was more than graphite and wood. It was my voice; it was my space to express without judgment, to sketch without performance. Just for me.

And I broke it.

I’ve never forgotten that.

I’m older now. I know who I am. I don’t need to break things to show it. And I no longer ask for understanding from someone who only offers correction. I’ve learned:

Sometimes, the cost of voicelessness is something precious.

That even restraint, when stretched too far, becomes a cage.

That anger, when it finally erupts, isn’t weakness. It’s just the soul trying to come up for air.

So Scratch That

Breaking that pencil was not my biggest mistake, but the biggest lesson I’ve written.