collect

I am linking up for Five Minute Friday. The FMF is hosted by Kate Motaung on her blog Heading Home. Today’s prompt is “Collect.” We’d love to have you join us on Thursday nights for our Twitter party. Don’t forget to check out FMF’s new home at http://fiveminutefriday.com. 




Today was a weird day. I was overly emotional for just about everything - stuff I was working on, things I read on the internet, music I listened to. These over the top emotions were connected to memories. They brought about feelings of regret, loss, pain, sadness... connected to people, places, situations...

Memories are merely collections. They can function as the graveyard for our souls, or the scrapbook of our hearts. Most of the time it's both. Our collection of memories can send us into a tailspin of regret or take us to a place of love and a sense of belonging.

I would love to figure out how to un-collect those memories that bring those feelings of regret and loss and pain. With all the things I collect in my life (books, scarves, kate spade bags...) it's the one collection I'm less than proud of. (My kate spade collection is a distant second.) Because these are collections that cause me to face my own sin and the sin others have put upon me.

Collections are intended to being us a sense of joy or comfort, usually. I have a friend with a collection of Starbucks from every city she's been to. Another who collects ceramic frogs (I try not to judge her for that one), and a friend who always buys a refrigerator magnet when she goes on vacation.

I've tried those different kind of collections. I've never been able to really stick to one. I have a few magnets from places I've been but my refrigerator looks like a half-hearted attempt at my travel log. And don't even get me started on my coffee mugs. That's a story in and of itself. And the frogs... well, thankfully I never tried that.

I'm not good at collecting those physical things that are meant to bring us joy when we look at them. Instead I collect the memories from my past, buried in a dusty corner of my heart that gets swept out once and a while when a email triggers me or a song reminds me of someone I used to love. Or someone who used to love me.

Comments

Andrew said…
Wow...you really touched a chord in me. I stopped collecting stuff because of the ghosts; too many friends didn't come back from places we should never have gone, and too much reminded me of them.

Now the only collection is in my heart, of voices and faces and bright sharp eyes...and somehow it can hurt just as bad. And maybe it's supposed to, because to forget thos we loved would be the greatest betrayal of all.

#1 at FMF this week.

https://blessed-are-the-pure-of-heart.blogspot.com/2017/07/your-dying-spouse-339-revelation-and.html
stephanie said…
Thank you, Andrew and Stephanie, for your encouraging words. But also for your vulnerability Andrew, in your post and your comment. What you are going through must be so hard.
Unknown said…
Great to see you writing again. Love your heart - and all the collections that make you who you are. xoxo
Christy said…
But Stephanie, we ALL collect those graveyard memories. The ones we regret and wish we could forget and the sweet scrapbook memories too. I could have written your first 3 paragraphs. I'm collecting a lot of those same things especially the feelings of late.(books, scarves, for my hair, and not Kate Spade, but, a collector of handbags, does that count?)

Happy to have met you this weekend!
Christy
mywritingplayground.com
Friar Tuck said…
I hoard pens and books :)

Popular posts from this blog

The Dichotomy of Country Music

for what is small is not at all