Dear Reader,
I have a problem with hoarding, to put it bluntly. Maybe it comes from my constant crafting, but I “simply” can’t throw away any handmade thing.
It started in middle school, around the same time that I started crocheting. My wall is littered with cards and handmade crafts given to me: old pictures scattered, each with their own individual story that I can’t seem to rid myself of.
My collection has only grown from the random notes that my friends and I passed to one another. For some reason, I had laminated them, despite them containing no real “important” information. I think it was the memories that were tied to them that forced me to hold on.
I look back at those same notes displayed on my wall. Despite not being as close to those people that I shared those memories with anymore, I can still tell their handwriting apart and recall the conversations that originated from them. They represent small parts of my past written on a “stupid” three-by-five index card.
These notes still hold important feelings that go beyond those random conversations. For instance, at the same time that I wrote these notes, I spent my evenings learning how to crochet shell stitches as well as what it means to “weave in my ends.”
Unsurprisingly, I still don’t do this for any project that is meant for myself, leaving ends unfinished. To be frank, I rarely make stuff for myself anymore. I just don’t have enough time.
This fact is displayed in my first-ever attempt to make a jacket. At the time, I had begged my parents to buy me five different one-pound balls of yarn because I just “had to” make this patchwork jacket. In hindsight, it was the middle of winter already, and there was no way I was ever going to finish before the spring sun set in. But little did I know that I actually would never have finished it.
Now, it stays in my closet, hidden behind my door, because I continue to swear that when I have enough time, I will finish it. Frankly, it’s not the most well-worked piece of clothing I have ever attempted to make. The yarn’s tension was too tight, and the colors were the most random things I ever bought. But I can’t bring myself to undo every single stitch I have put together. I spent hours, days even, trying to perfect it. So even considering undoing it feels wrong. So I’ll continue to blame it on the lack of time I have, because that’s much easier to explain than trying to convince people that the garbage is worth salvaging. It is so much easier than trying to explain why I will never throw it away, even if I never touch it again.
For that same reason, even if I stop talking to a person, what they gave to me stays locked away, instead of in a garbage bin. Sometimes, I look back at the handmade promotion card I had received, the one in the box stuffed in the far back right corner of the bottom drawer of my desk. It still has the piece of paper that is covered with their art and handwritten notes. I don’t even talk to this person anymore, but I can’t bring myself to throw the card away because I know how much a handcrafted gift means. There was a lot of time and effort put into it, and for that matter, their time, their effort and their craft don’t deserve to be tossed.
I think I have formed this mindset because of my own crafts. I have cut and have been cut out of people’s lives, it’s part of growing up. As we age, we learn that it is okay to “cut out things that are no longer serving us.” But how do we define what no longer serves us? I have gained a sense of self with my own crafts, a part of me in each one that I make. So I can’t help but wonder what happened to the seal, the penguin or the bat that I made. I can’t help but wonder if they held on to them because, frankly, I think I would have done that.
But life is just a work in progress, so as I continue to untangle the knots, I think that at one point I need to get rid of the scraps.
Still dealing with this WIP,
Sura
