Tangled in Grandma’s Sewing Kit

10.10.2024

There’s a difference between being immersed in a state of chaos filled with genuine happiness, and being in comfort yet with a nagging voice telling you that something is not quite right or is no longer feeding your soul.

There is a feeling of wholesomeness and quiet - like everything is falling back together - which you are eager to get hold of.
It all began with a feeling of escapism and the need to break free from emotional turbulences, roller coasters, and guilt trips controlling your every little move and mood. The urge to get rid of this feeling and lifestyle and shed every toxic thought and leftover from the environment you were in,  just like a dog trying to shake off the ticks which were forcefully imposed on him and feel so alien to his body.

The feeling screamed for a sense of freedom and detachment, a feeling of excitement and non-judgment that could no longer handle any intensity in terms of emotions, nor any weight to be carried as emotional baggage.
It required a space where explanations were no longer needed and gossip wasn’t entertained,  a feeling you can choose to own, and no one else gets to but you.

It did live, within its expectations - at least for the very first few weeks - until it snowed love bombs with a cold ick and an explosion of emotions.
It was a feeling that was not asked for, nor offerings that were heartily welcomed.

A few weeks later, it came to a sudden shift of proper contrasts - a contrast that held a connection more natural, and one that spoke for days even on the ones where no words were shared or whispered.

It got us tangled like two magnets that only function if stashed in grandma’s chocolate box that had sadly turned into a dusty sewing kit, so deeply attached to each other without paying attention to the fact that it was a place with so many other objects scattered around.
No sense of what could entangle us at some point was foreseen.
No sense of direction or awareness of our surroundings - well, at least from my end.

It did feel beautiful though, the fact that we were there, living it, experiencing: emotions, moments, and life.
Sleeping each night with eagerness to wake up and still be stuck to each other.
Little did one magnet know that the other had a number of other magnets stuck to it, from other hidden angles, or perhaps in different places within grandma’s kit, that only they knew how to keep in that place.
Ones that held far more meaning and many years of attachment, which a new connection could not, and did not, withstand.

Perhaps it wasn’t about the strength of the connection or how much power it held.
They made it seem, at that point, as if the attached magnets were to be held with care, “do not touch,” “object is fragile” kind of warning, until taken out of the box.

But no.
They were there as a safety landing.
Or maybe the safety landing.
They contained so many more memories and so much security than one could dare to imagine.
Ones that could overpower any new experience or excitement that tried to ride along.

That only lasted for so long, though.
The magnet, love or likeness or lust - call it whatever you want.
It lasted only as long as the kit was closed, and it felt like that was the safest option to live from, with breadcrumbs scattered each day, feeding them as if it were the only source of life out there.

Thing is, when you’re living inside a box where the only way out feels like it depends on an external power, someone who has to open it and drag you out with force so you can breathe again, each night you’re stuck inside feels like the end of the world.

As if your emotions are multiplied. Or tripled. Or quadrupled.
Well, whatever that number is, multiply it by a hundred more.

It feeds on you. On every thought and every move.
It’s daunting. And it’s so heavy to hold.
It’s as if you’re a machine that is working but is just. about. to. break.
Holding on to every last single thread to give it your all and function.

It’s sad and intense.
And it takes a lot from you.

At a certain moment of clarity, you realize:
no tool in that box will help you get out.
No new breath taken with the hand of a neighbor.

You need to get out yourself.
With your own means.
Digging a new pathway through every piece of leftover hope and memory that’s trying to drag you down and suck you in.

They always tell you that nostalgia is a scary term.
It can be manipulative.
It alters what you saw and what you felt.
It acts like a filter, highlighting certain aspects and contrasting the others.

It’s tricky and unreliable.
But it still feels so damn good sometimes.

Especially in times when it’s all you can hold onto as certain and true,
perhaps a blink into the past, into something familiar you had already survived,
when your life around you feels so damn blurry.