Putty

I don’t always trust my memory. It is a place things go to change, to become greater, heavier, and more sad than they originally were.

My memory is anxieties favorite place. I may even argue that my memory is anxieties playground.

Anxiety can take moments of my life and stretch them thin. It turns my memories into a goooey putty that can be stretched so thin light can shine through. That light illuminates every bit of arrant debris that has found its way into the putty, a hair from the dog, an unidentified fuzzy, a crumb from the kitchen.

Anxiety leaves no mysteries in that sticky mess. All are examined and once anxiety is finished with the first round, it will mush the putty together and stretch the mass thin again, revealing a whole new set of debris.

My body tells anxiety to stop and put the putty down and look at it from the outside. Do you see how it shimmers in the light? It is beautiful. Why stretch something apart to look at its sagging insides when the outside is just as good.

I listen to the back and forth between my body and anxiety. I wish I could listen to my body instead of anxiety, but anxiety and I have always had a special thing.

Anxiety has accompanied me to every first day of school and every single job interview. My body is there too but slowly drifts away until anxiety and I become one being.

If anxiety is the holder of the putty, my memories, both good and bad, are the debris that flake through it. The putty holds them all together creating a culmination of me.

They are the time the training wheels of my bike got tangled in the grass.

They are the time when I found an aunt wedged into the straw of my Capri Sun after leaving it on the bottom shelf of my grandmother's refrigerator.

They are the time I picked out a new dog as my childhood dog lay dying in the next room.

I don’t know why I remember these things. I suppose it's because they all stick together and show me who I am. I am the putty and they are my debris.