The Fixer

The Fixer!

And I will try to fix you: Coldplay

The sentiment in “Fix You” is beautiful, but it’s a dangerous kind of poetry. It paints love as a form of engineering, suggesting that if we just try hard enough, we can reach inside someone else’s psyche and rearrange the broken parts until they hum again.

But Coldplay was wrong. You cannot fix anyone.

When we try to “fix” someone, we start seeing them as a project. We stop loving the person as they are and start loving the potential of who they might become once we’re finished with them. Unfortunately, the structure of the human soul is far too complex for external repair. You can offer someone a safe harbor, you can hand them the tools, and you can stand by them with a flashlight while they navigate their own darkness, but you cannot do the work for them.

The myth of the “fixer” doesn’t just fail the one being repaired. Some people have been utterly broken by the very people they sought to fix.

We often enter these dynamics with a sense of noble sacrifice, believing that our stability is an infinite resource. We think we can absorb their darkness and transform it into light through sheer willpower. But this is a lie. Instead of neutralizing the pain, we often find ourselves infected by it.

When you spend your life walking on eggshells to avoid another person’s triggers, or pouring your energy into a vessel that has a hole in the bottom, you get tired, you start to erode. It is a tragic irony: You become a casualty of a war you weren’t meant to fight.

This is why the “fix you” narrative is so treacherous. It suggests that if you walk away from a sinking ship, you are failing a test of love. In reality, walking away is often an act of self-preservation. You cannot set yourself on fire to keep someone else warm. Eventually, you will both be nothing but ash.

If the cost of “fixing” someone else is your own sanity, the price is too high. Sometimes, the bravest thing you can do is admit that some breaks are not yours to mend, and some people, if held too tightly, will only break you in return.

Know when to cut your losses and move on.

reflections #life #fixyou #healing