Unravel

At our most desperate state, we become physically vulnerable. As the body responds to mental and emotion strain, we may find ourselves with a stomach in knots, a headache, lack of an appetite (never a bad thing), and possibly a less than ideal night’s sleep due to a wandering mind contemplating the many unpleasant “what ifs” that are always more dire at night. 

But how does one explain (what turned out to be scalding hot) soup that in a split pea moment fell from your hands and tipped over, pouring all over the inside of the car as you sat in the driver’s seat (the “pandemic” table for one), burning your leg and causing blisters on your left middle finger (a Freudian choice of digits). How is it that, on that same day at dinner time, Weasles the cat bites your right hand as you tried to push him away from the other cat to avoid a fight between the two snarling brothers? The following day, food poisoning hits and your stomach in knots joins ranks with a gut in knots. What did I eat? The soup spilled, remember? 

Two wounded hands, obstructing my ability to easily type or write, suddenly the left side of head starts throbbing all of the sudden, a migraine headache, I later learn. I had to WebMD it, because I hardly ever have headaches and couldn’t explain the sudden weirdo pressure in my head. All I could come up with was brain cancer. Alas no, this time the internet calmed me down and told me to turn off the lights, lay down, since what I was experiencing was a migraine headache. Day two of the headache, I learned my credit card was stolen: $19.99, $19.99, $19.99, $19.99 … unknown charges. 

There are times when everything in your life comes down to one string. If pulled, it unravels everything about your reality you knew and nothing will be the same once unstrung. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but when it is put upon you—not of your own doing—and someone, not you, is holding the end of that string, it is disconcerting to the point of stomach knots and spilled soup and unknown Apple $19.99 charges. Again, this is not necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes someone else simply has to pull the string because you can’t, for one reason or another, including that you do not even realize that the string needs to be pulled. 

You may not know it, but maybe you have gone as far as you can go with this ball of string and it simply needs to unravel to set you free.

Be brave.

—Sketch