Written by Shel Silverstein / Recommended by Harmonia
A short story with a message we all need to hear.
Let’s talk about Harmonia
When I spoke about my last roommate-turned-best friend, Phoebe, I mentioned the lesbian tendencies and easy nature of friendship. Naturally, the same applies here. Though, where Phoebe and I crushed the ice with trauma talks, Harmonia and I bonded during a certain trip to Canyon de Chelly where we ate shrooms and tried to touch the Milky Way. Positively zooted.
Before meeting Harmonia, I’d never experienced unconditional love. Had never received it and most definitely had never given it. I thought it was overrated, the idea that someone could love you no matter what. To me, love should have conditions. There should always be a line that if crossed, you can look at the person and say, “Welp, we’re done.”
I didn’t understand Harmonia at first. Her full-throttle, love-like-we-could-die-tomorrow type of existence wasn’t something I could relate to.
When I say unconditional love, I mean she loves you for all that you are. Once, during one of our house’s infamous kitchen talks, we were discussing, and I quote, “The shittiest things we’ve ever done.” I told her mine, my stomach in bits. She just shrugged, eyes widening not because of what I’d told her, but because of the spoonful of arugula that she’d popped into her mouth.
I could’ve told Harmonia that I used to mess with my grandma’s oxygen tank for fun (I didn’t, promise), and she would’ve just said, “She was probably a bitch, anyway.”
Harmonia doesn’t do anything half-assed. Whether it’s friendships, romance, the act of eating (her moans turn meals into questionably sexual situations), or working. Emphasis on working. If I could bottle her work ethic and sell it, then I’d never have to work again — which is my ideal situation and her nightmare.
We joke about me having no thoughts in my head. I swear I’m not a halfwit. We just mean that I don’t have any worries, so there’s loads of free space in my brain for more important things that make me happy. Images of my name on the cover of a book, indecent thoughts about my favorite hot people, new food recipes — you know, that sort.
She’s asked me before how I stop myself from worrying. I explained that I spent the first fourteen years of my life wasting time with worries. I’d spend an hour before bed running down the list of people in my life, asking God to make sure they woke up the next day. I’d cycle between thinking I had cancer, to scoliosis, to lice (it sounds funny, but the scabs in my hair… not rad). After bringing my doctor a chart I’d drawn of all the alleged ailments in my body, he introduced me to the term hypochondriac. I told Harmonia that I missed out on a lot because of my worrying. And that I couldn’t imagine going through the rest of my life with that level of anxiety, so I said screwwww that.
She and I, in quite a few ways, are just opposite ends of a spectrum, but it works. Over the past year, she’s taught me how to work hard and be more receptive to people; I’ve taught her how to worry less and love herself a little bit more.
Let’s talk about The Missing Piece Meets the Big O
Our main character in this short illustrated book is called The Missing Piece. His only goal? Find out to whom (or what?) he is the missing piece.
Throughout the story, The Missing Piece tries to fit into others. He’s either the wrong shape or the wrong size and it doesn’t work. But then he finds the Big O.
The Missing Piece asks, “What do you want of me?”
To which the Big O replies, “Nothing.”
Not getting the hint, the Missing Piece asks, “What do you need from me?”
“Nothing.”
The Big O doesn’t have a missing piece. He’s whole on his own. Get it?
This story has a message you don’t have to think too hard about. It’s right there in the title. The message: Don’t fit yourself into another’s mold. Love and accept who you are, and you’ll be whole.
This is one of Harmonia’s favorite books for a reason. She’s struggled with loving herself as a separate entity. Her self-love has been dependent on the relationships in her life, both platonic and romantic. It’s also highly dependent on work, with any inconvenience or lack of affirmation sending her into a bit of a spiral. But I get it, we probably all do. Loving yourself isn’t an easy thing to do. Self-help books and therapists can attest to that. But life, though sometimes unbearably endless, is heartbreakingly short. Too much to do, too many sights to see, too many people to meet, and not even a quarter of the time to do it.
There comes a point when you have to realize that you’re stuck with the person you are, so you can either waste energy hating them or you can buck the hell up, look in the mirror, and say, “Yea, that'll do.”
Loving yourself is much more fun, I promise. And learning to be OK on your own helps dwindle any anxiety about the future into a benign lil’ kernel that hardly shows up on a brain scan. Self-reliance is a hell of a drug — the only one I’ll condone…aside from shrooms, of course.
My final verdict: read if you need a little reminder.
Rate: 8/10
Author Website / thriftbooks (or visit your local bookstore!!!!)
To understand the point of this post, read this. I’m a lazy bastard and won’t be re-explaining every time.
