Unravelled

I am starting to think that humans are a lot like a ball of yarn. This either means I have had too many canned peaches in the last month, or I am on to something. Definitely the former, but maybe the latter, as well. We’ll see.

What makes you, you? Many things, right?

Picture a ball of yarn. That is us.

What started out so simple, is now a complex, layered being. Everything that makes us who we are is right there, all wrapped into one.

Now pull the loose end. That is also us.

Constantly pulled in every direction, undoing everything we knew and exploring everything we never did.

Sometimes, we give pieces of ourselves away and live on somewhere else. Sometimes, we venture off and come back to wrap ourselves in a different way.

And sometimes, we are a ball of yarn that gets kicked down the stairs and pulled around the house until we are wrapped around every table leg.

That is when we find ourselves completely unravelled.

At times during this pandemic, I have felt that way. Just an unravelled ball of yarn, trying to make itself whole again.

I know a lot of people are feeling the same way.

Everyone has something. Those three words have echoed in my head for the last few days and were my initial inspiration for this post.

In actuality, it should probably be four words: Everyone has many somethings.

What I mean by that is, we are all missing aspects of ourselves in this time of social distancing and staying home. Some of the things that make us who we are have not been apart of us for the last month.

Everyone has fewer somethings, right now.

There are so many nouns with which we cannot associate with. We can’t live with it; we can’t live without it. And as I said before, sometimes we give ourselves away.

You know where this is going.

We are stuck in a U2 song, basically. This is payback for the time people got mad that U2 uploaded their new album to everyone’s phone.

This is no secret, but I have felt completely lost without sports. They gave me so much purpose, joy, and comfort. For 28 years, they gave me an identity. And now they’ve been taken away like Charles Barkley’s skills in Space Jam.

While I can still consume sports in some capacity, it just feels like I’m a kid who got a Happy Meal, but they forgot to include the toy. The epitome of a sarcastic, whoop-de-doo.

It is a daily confrontation of, “If I can’t be this, then what am I?

This feeling is eerily similar to how I felt when I graduated from university. So much of my identity was linked to the people, the place, and the things. Who was I without all that? How do I fill the empty space?

If I am not a ball of yarn, then I am just yarn.

Maybe it is in these times of feeling unravelled, when I’ll surprise myself and discover something I never knew was there. I am not sure what that is yet.

Water polo in the bathtub? Somehow, this was the first idea that came to mind.

If I do find something new, when this pandemic is over and I am (almost) whole again, perhaps I’ll be able to bring these new interests, or skills, with me and can point to them and say, “they make me who I am.”

Am I being overly-optimistic, or did I just crack the code to the meaning of life?

The idea that, if you feel like the world is taking something away from your life and forcing you to replace the emptiness – it is not. It is, merely, creating more space so you can add to what is already there.

I do not know where this rush of self-proclaimed wisdom is coming from, so please do not let what I am saying come across as preachy because I am just discovering this stuff myself as I type it. Who is even controlling my fingers right now?

Today is Friday, but it does not feel like Friday because even the days of the week feel unravelled.

Just like me.

Just like a ball of yarn.

Yeah, it’s time to lay off the canned peaches.

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