perhaps it is both.

Adolescence hits like a snapped rubber band, and you are left reeling from the sting in a way that you did not expect.

You are architecture and art and timelessness, unshakeable, and yet a tiny stone has thrown you, left you chipped in a way that suggests ugliness and disfigurement, imperfection that shows up starkly against white marble faces, perfection. The curators do not like to see it, nor the patrons. They worry. You see the frown lines.

What of preservation? Unthinkeable. Preservation means hiding, means time lost. So you stay on your shelf. Cracks expand, time passes, and you do not lose it. And yet you lose all of it. Wasted.

Preservation, conservation. Repair. They do not come, they are not for you. With time you come to realize that ancient things cannot always be fixed.

Your ruins are eroded, and with time it all becomes a liveable sort of brokenness.

You are broken, you are quite evidently and visibly broken -- but the ruins are still there. Your ruins are still there, and people visit them.