Scattered Phrases

I have a box at home, that is filled with odds and ends. An old pink starburst wrapper. Bedsheet clippings with cartoon dogs sledding on them. Pieces of paper with a flurry of words on them – and handmade keychains. Tiny folded Japanese brocades so soft and pliable that they fall apart when the box opens and must be rearranged back into their finished shape. These all mean something to me. But it is the papers that matter the most.

Most of them are vague, short. Some have pen scribbled fiercely across them, and others are precisely pressed with thin graphite. Still others are etched in soft gray that fades over time. But these are immortal – more immortal, at least, then I am at the moment.

On these snippets of paper are words, phrases, poems that have never really found their home in my diary or to be posted on the wall. They are fragments of thoughts and emotions that once held me, that once defined me in their unalterable, invisible way. Sometimes I remember what they were connected to: a time where I was rejected, that moment where I succeeded, perhaps a moment where I cried.

Most of the time, I no longer know why I wrote them, or when – most of them do not have dates, but I prefer it this way – I can remember who I once was, without pinpointing a spot on the calendar and declaring that this, this was the day I changed. This was when I was still foolish, this was the day! – instead, I can just know that somewhere between here and there, something has changed within me. I can embrace ambiguity and the blanket of reassurance it gives, knowing that at some point, I was a different person, and that I have slowly changed, unseen, unperceived, until I reached who I am today. It allows me to attach no labels to myself – instead, I am allowed to grow into who I am, and who I will be. I can grow without definitive landmarks and structured phases.

Instead, I am captured in a few words, scrawled on paper, a part of me, an essence, imparted to the visible. It does not represent me, but it is part of me. I don’t forget how far I’ve come.