Vachon Imagined

“A mother’s advice,” she said, in the tone mothers use when they are about to heal you with a sentence they found somewhere between lived wisdom and daytime television: Nothing about you is a problem. You are not broken.

And I remember freezing for a second. Complete deer-in-headlights silence. I can still picture her saying it on one of those floral love seats only the late 80s and early 90s could produce — furniture patterned like emotional endurance itself.

Because… really?

Acne felt like a problem.

Not having a prom date felt like a problem.

Then finally getting a prom date only to discover you had apparently reached the bottom shelf of available teenage men, because he abandoned you halfway through the night to go smoke weed behind a gas station — definitely a problem.

Not getting into grad school except on probation because the math portion of the ACT publicly exposed me as a creative writing major? Also a problem.

Problems were everywhere.

And meanwhile I had quietly turned myself into one too. My thoughts, my insecurities, my perception of myself — all filed under urgent ongoing concern.

That is the strange thing about peace. It does not necessarily make things better. Sometimes it just makes them less solid. Less personal. Less capable of sitting on your chest at 2 a.m. demanding a full psychological presentation.

Not solved. Just… temporarily unfollowed.

Because as comforting as it sounds to say there are no problems, we all know that is not true. A woman being raped is a problem. Hunger is a problem. Medical care being treated like a luxury subscription service is definitely a problem.

The list keeps going.

But what humans quietly do — and maybe have always done — is learn how to live beside unresolved things. Not because they are weak. Not because they approve of suffering. But because permanent solutions are mostly a political fantasy people repeat every four years with terrifying confidence.

Sorry to politicians. Sorry to activists. Sorry to every inspirational poster with a sunrise in the background.

Most change is temporary.

Civilizations change. Economies change. Laws change. People change their bios three times a week after discovering one new podcast.

Nothing stays fixed long enough to become salvation.

Which, strangely enough, might be the only comforting thing about any of this.

Even problems eventually lose interest in being permanent.

And maybe my mother knew that all along. Maybe “you are not broken” was never meant to mean life would stop being absurd, disappointing, or occasionally humiliating. Maybe she simply meant I did not need to add myself to the list of global crises.

Which honestly felt fair.

The world already seemed busy enough.