embroidery…

Was trying to put the people in my life and the relationships I have with them in perspective… feel this need to be emotionally stable in an atmosphere that is so charged with my feelings… need to stay sane and yet retain my insanity…
Here is how I tried to make sense of it all…
If I was to look at my life as a swatch of fabric…a cross stitch fabric whose weave is loose and there are many little holes…a blank piece of fabric is all I am given to start with…I’d really see myself as the little shiny silver needle…such an incredible delicate piece of work…with all the people we come across as strands of coloured thread…that we let into our needle…some threads are single…some come along with many others…some are plain…some in shades…some in silk and some in coarse cotton…each beautiful and desirable in its own way…
With the needle, the threads leave little crosses on our fabric…filling in the holes and making us beautiful and full…some stay for long…some just disappear, maybe never to return again…and there are some that we don’t allow back…some that we want back but won’t have us…
There are some threads that maybe leave only two crosses but stand out among all the others…
There are some threads that compliment the colour of our fabric and enhance us….
And there are also those that clash with the rest of the threads or simply merge into the background…
And really while the pattern in forming, line by line of randomn crosses, gaps, colours…it makes no sense and we have to keep saying ‘don’t kill yourself over it dear needle…’
Its only later when the pattern in nearing completion that you look back and see what has emerged and realize that those three black crosses on the 28th row, hole numbers 4, 5 and 6 that troubled you so so much at that time, were actually necessary and how much they’ve added to the pattern and yet your fabric was not all about just that…you needed each of those crosses to make your life a life well lived…well felt…
I don’t ever want to be a fabric that is untouched, letting no thread pass my needle…leaving no crosses…tight or loose…matched or mismatched… I don’t think it matters if my pattern makes no sense, I want to live and feel every cross I stitch…want to give to each thread all that I can…not thinking of whether they will return to be with me or not…that’s simply not in my control…