Jars

If I had a million jars I don’t think I would use them.  

I think about all the things I could put in those jars, how pretty and colorful, organized and bright they could look scattered about. But if I’m being honest I think they’d pretty much be forgotten somewhere, tossed aside.  I love the scatteredness of life, while I hate it at the same time. I hate little things that are just strewn about. Some form of organization and arrangement in life is essential for me, yet the messiness is one of my favorite things.  

When I was roadtripping throughout the US, I had stuff all over my car. Under seats and between the little crevices that you can’t reach until you fanagle the seat just enough to squeeze your little fingers through. Stuff was tossed in the back seat haphazardly, still is.  There is no rhyme or reason to where things go, yet I know exactly where it is, where it belongs. And I love that. Half the time I feel like I’m looking for things that are right in front of my face and it makes me think about jars. Jars that would hold all of your preciousness, your golden moments, your sadness, your secrets.   It actually makes me all crunchy inside for trapping something like that in a container so see-through, so exposed, yet no one knows it exists. A strange idea.

I love containers.  One of my favorite stores is the container store.  Oddly enough, if I’m in there for too long I get incredibly overwhelmed by the amount of options one has to contain something and I become grossly aware of how often I do this to pieces of my own life.  I don’t think I’ve actually ever purchased anything from this store because of this reason: the chaos inside me builds to the point that it forces my feet out the doors, to an open space where I can sigh out the entrapment inside me.

I struggle living in closed spaces.  Why I prefer it to be summer instead of winter: so I can open the windows and doors, hear the outside. A reason I sleep outside: the lack of containment found simply in looking at the open sky where the stars seem to have no end. I think most of the time I feel so uncomfortable with containment because I’ve done it to myself for most of my life.  There are pieces I can claim as having no fault of my own, yet still seem to fall on my shoulders. The idea of being a captive but also being left behind are two of my worst fears, a battle inside me. It sits in the middle of my brain and eats through my frontal lobe, tearing at my eyes, but I don’t understand, can’t understand why.

The only person who would want you would never let you be free. Settling, settling as a captive that will never be abandoned due to the nature of her beholder. A threat of abandonment matched with a fear of captivity. Equality. Chaos of the soul.  Jars seem to soothe me until they set me over the edge. A double edged sword. A spark held to a flame.