70 Staples – Not broken. Rebuilt.

70 Staples

The name came later.

At the time, the staples were simply what closed the incision. Seventy of them. I didn’t count them. Someone else did, which felt appropriate. Surgeons are exact. Patients are usually busy doing other things, like waking up or not.

The surgery itself was extensive. That part is factual. There were plans, revisions, and decisions made midstream, none of which were mine. When it was finished, there was no sense of conclusion. Things were closed, secured, and handed off to recovery. That was it.

There was no moment where it all “hit me.” No swell of emotion. No clarity. Recovery did not arrive with insight. It arrived with time, repetition, and an uncomfortable amount of attention to small things that shouldn’t matter but do.

Being put back together turns out to be very different from being restored. One is mechanical. The other is something people talk about because it sounds nicer.

The staples were obvious. They were meant to be. They weren’t there to be subtle or symbolic. They were there to hold. They didn’t respond to optimism, mindset, or patience. They either did their job or they didn’t. That was the agreement.

Eventually, they were removed.

What remained wasn’t pain, exactly, and it wasn’t relief either. It was the understanding that repair leaves structure behind. You can take out the hardware, but the body remembers where the work happened. So does everything else.

That’s when the number became unavoidable.

Seventy isn’t a poetic number. It doesn’t invite interpretation. It doesn’t soften with meaning. It became a metaphor only because it refused not to. Because it represented the actual effort required to keep something intact long enough to survive its own reconstruction.

The staples represent the reality and level of effort it has taken to put my life back together. Not healing. Not growth. Effort. Sustained, unglamorous, deliberate effort. Something earned. Something quieter than most explanations allow.

This project exists in that space.

70 Staples is not a recovery story. It isn’t a guide. It doesn’t offer reassurance or instruction, and it isn’t interested in tidy arcs. These essays are records. Of surviving. Of rebuilding. Of what remains after force is applied and something holds.

This isn’t linear.

Some pieces will move forward. Others won’t. Some will double back or stop mid-thought. That’s intentional. Reconstruction rarely follows a clean sequence, and memory is worse.

I’m not writing to inspire anyone. I’m writing because accuracy matters more than comfort. If something here resonates, it won’t be because I made it accessible. It will be because you already recognize it.

The staples came out.

The work didn’t end.

That’s where everything that follows begins.