I like beautiful, useful things. Once, this ball of yarn was a beautiful, useful thing- a shawl of linen and cotton, hand crocheted and brought back as a gift from Ireland. I loved it- but in the wrong way, and it became a symbol of attachment. What Dr. C calls 'golden handcuffs' where you are lured into acceptance through the illusion of the lovely.
Like a dog chained with a silver chain, beautiful but captive.
So, after thinking long and hard, becoming so wound up that all I did this past week was dream and break out in hives, I devised a ritual to symbolically break those golden handcuffs. I sat down last night and unravelled the shawl. It took about an hour, and the lint tricked the allergies off, but in a mixture of sneezing and weeping it was done. Undone, the threads were curly, tangled, looked like ramen noodles.
I collected the other gifts- earrings of gold, sapphire, diamond, the silver triskel bracelet, the gold shamrock, the claddagh ring that symbolized all I thought I wanted. I wrapped these together in soft grey flannel, then wove the yarn around it, untangling as I could- oddly enough, the yarn at the heart of the ball is badly tangled, straightens out only near the end. It is done.
It is not my nature to destroy the beautiful, useful- but sometimes creation and growth can only come after destruction. Every small thing requires sacrifice, freedom is no small thing.
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