Slipping Off by a Thread

I sat looking down at the tattered and worn thread sticking out from my yellow chair. It was waving back and forth as it poked up at me through the neatly woven pattern, refusing to lay flat and blend in with the rest of them. How had I not noticed this before? It felt uncomfortable to see something so out of place surrounded by my neatly organized and contained house. My chair sat catty-cornered in my room, exactly three feet, from my made bed. My floors were swept, vacuumed, and moped daily. My pictures hung perfectly straight and were leveled to the exact degree. My pillows on my bed, couch, and chair all matched and were always in the right order. My closet contained clothes that were both color coded and arranged for each season.

Clothes were the escape that I allowed myself to splurge on, quite often actually. Clothes, coffee, and the occasional sweet that I immediately worked off the next morning. I woke up every day at exactly 6:13am, put on my workout clothes, and preformed the same weekly schedule of exercises. Legs, arms, arms, legs, treadmill, bike, and finished with core. I knew every day what I would be doing and the conversations I would be having. Most people do and each of us seem content preforming in the roles that we apparently decide for ourselves. It had never really occurred to me that this was a bad thing. I enjoyed organization and was good at it! It was the trait that allowed me to advance so well into my career. “Efficient” is a word that people usually used to describe me, and I decided to accept it at as a compliment.

Threads did always seem to find their way into my life. Threads on my clothes, my pillows, towels, and I wondered how often I had simply gone and grabbed scissors to snip them away before any damage could be done. What would happen if I let this one remain? I began to fiddle with it instead of reading the book that was in my hand, another “great book.” As I gazed up at my bookshelf, I looked through the names of the authors I had grown so found of. Countless names skimmed past my eyes, and I thought back to the time when I thought their ideas could be more than quotes to hang on a wall or captions for a photo. I twiddled the thread in my finger and slowly started to pull it up until I stopped and thought about my chair once more.

My wonderful big fluffy mustard yellow chair. I have had it for almost my whole life. It was always my escape to read. Romance, comedy, fiction, nonfiction, anything but a mystery. I could never make it through the whole without becoming bored and flipping to the end to see who killed the main character or stole the baby. Maybe that was my problem. I could never wait for something to be solved, I always had to find the answer myself. The inability to wait for the unknown I suppose. My grip on the string lessened and I gazed longingly at my chair once more. It was long so I could stretch out my legs and sit my hands in my lap to hold the book at the perfect angle. It was perfect for my back position and somehow not too long for my short legs. I hated chairs that were like my pants that always needed to be hemmed. It reminded me more of the qualities I would like to change but never would. With one hand still on the thread, my other rubbed the worn material that had been chapped by me over the years. This is where I sat in it for hours on end reading the great ideas and doing my schoolwork that had now landed me a PhD. “A doctor of the great books,” so they say. A girl who could do statistics and read while remaining to have a life. What they did not know is my life consisted of constantly trying to fill the void that never would go away. I thought it would with school and learning, but somewhere deep down something was still missing. I lived a very predictable life that allowed for a very fortunate career.

I know this sounds like some type of “Eat, Pray, Love” moment where the woman looks back through her life and realizes she now needed to escape the normal conventions she had given to herself, but it isn’t. I enjoy my organized existence. I knew what it was like to be a reckless wild child and live by one’s instinct instead of one’s desire. What did it matter anyways? I was a professor to kids who wanted to learn but didn’t know how because they grew up like me, learning that it is easier to be right than to question being right. We write papers to agree, watch shows to escape, and scroll through images that make us all the same. I thought the older I became and the more education I received, that void would go away and somehow all the authors that seemed to figure it out could give me an answer, but the longer I went to school the worse it got.

All my life I remember loving school. There never was a time I did not want to learn something, to really learn something. I wanted to a be giant sponge that absorbed as much as I could, so I could go through my life slowly dripping the knowledge out on anyone who wanted to be washed off from the redundant conversations that take place daily. I must have forgotten that sponges do not stay fresh forever. They get overused, dirty, and eventually thrown out because they smell of the spoiled food that washes down the drain never to be seen again. The real problem is that I never got thrown out. The ideas and experiences I had remained un-squeezed because instead challenging the great ideas and the systems that taught them, I remained complacent with knowing that others thought I knew them.

My fingers tightened on the string, and I thought back to the first time a teacher “saw something in me.” Ms. Maggie was her name, and she was one of those people that stay with you forever. She had dark brown curly hair that always was down, and her smile was big enough to know that each day would be the best. She loved books more than anyone I had ever met. She said that books are the only thing that can offer you a free vacation. That our imagination was the only tool that would ever be fully ours and that it was up to us on how we would go about using it. So strange to think what an impact people can make on you when you are young. She took the time to find what each of us was interested in and instead of making us read whatever books she wanted, she suited our studies to what we needed.

One day she had us go up to the bulletin board and pick a topic to write over. When I finally was called up to choose, I was anxious. Even in second grade I was anxious and worried about how I could be perfect. I walked up to the board and grabbed the last cut out she had on the board. They were all shaped as objects and mine was a raindrop. On the back it said, “write about what a raindrop means to you.” I sat rocking back in forth in my chair chewing on my pencil because I had never thought about what a raindrop meant to me. Everyone around me was writing away like nothing was stopping them and I started to panic. Ms. Maggie walked over and pulled me into the hall. She shut the door behind us, and I immediately started to cry. She looked at me with her big brown eyes, smiled, and gave me a hug. As I sobbed in her arms over something so trivial, she said something to me that I will never forget; “Quincy, perfection is the enemy to creativity, and it can only be your choice which one you shield from being destroyed.” As a second grader, I did not fully understand what she was saying and now, as I twirl the string in my hand, it is clear to me which one I have now chosen.

After my tears had dried, she told me to stop thinking so hard, to simply write. The next day she called me up to her desk and said I needed to send a letter home that she had written to my parents. I took it home and surprisingly my mother, who is never short for words, did not speak of it until the next day. We sat down at one of those long brown ugly tables with the short blue chairs which made my dad puff out of frustration. Ms. Maggie pulled out my story and told my parents they needed to read it. She did not say anything to me but just simply looked at me with the same constant smile, but this time she had a bit more twinkle in her eye. She told me to read the story out loud so they could hear it.

“There once a raindrop that lived in the sky with his parents and two sisters. All his life his parents told him that one day he would have to learn to be brave and drop from the sky. The raindrop would sit on the edge of the cloud with his black sneakers and look down at the world below him. He saw pink and purple flowers, birds, and bees that looked so pretty from above. His sisters would make fun of him because, while they were practicing their jumping skills at home, he would be sitting quietly on the edge of the cloud waiting for his day to drop. The raincloud wanted his jump to perfect, but he never wanted to not have to see the flowers and the bees from above. He liked to see the rainbows of all the colors and was scared what would happen when he fell. His parents always told him that he would have to get over his fear and start practicing with his sisters. One sister said “he will never jump. We will just leave him here.”

There was a rainbow come out from the cloud beside him. He saw the red, blue, and green colors and thought that maybe he should just slide down the rainbow instead of jumping. He went to tell his parents about his idea and then heard a loud cracking noise and a flash of light. He had no clue what was going on. His parents looked at each other and said, “it is time.” His sisters started hoping up and down. He hugged his mom and started to cry. His mom pulled back and said, “come on we all have to go to the edge now.” He started to understand what was happening and did not want to jump. He was not ready. He was not perfect. He was scared. They all grabbed hands and he would not take his sisters. His dad yelled at him and to grab on, but he could not. They yanked his hand and pulled it. They said on the count of three we will jump. He heard “one” “two” and on “three” he saw his favorite pink flower and let go of their hands. He saw them falling but did not know what to do. He wanted to leap but he could not. He looked to his pink flower and then knew he would eventually jump but on his own. He then picked up his feet and leaped into the air and forever laid among his favorite flowers and the bees.”

When I was younger, I did believe jumping was possible and the best thing to do, but isn’t that what happens? We are young and think the whole world is one jump away and then we grow up and realize that most of us never do take the leap. We are threads that remain lying down and are so caught up looking down that we forget to look around. My whole life I thought I was chasing something but really, I was just running away from everything. I fiddled with the string once more and felt the desire to pull it and rip the whole chair to shreds. I was now a woman with a finished piece of paper that meant absolutely nothing to me. I laughed at the hypocrisy that had overtaken my life.? I strived for the words “distinguished,” “best,” and “perfect” my whole life and now it had paid off. I was recognized like I had always wanted. I was content with it because I made the choice of this life for myself. There were plenty of opportunities that I could have changed paths and I freely decided not to. I wanted the organization, the structure, the award. I wanted it all and now I sit alone in a yellow chair that had been the most consistent thing in my life. People who say I have a commitment problem obviously have never seen my crutch that sits perched in my room. It reminded me of everything and everyone I had sacrificed to become what I was.

Each level of my education I was taught that the letter “A” meant I was good enough. That doing homework on time and putting my studies first would lead me into the direction I needed to go but the problem is I never really decided which direction that should be. I was told that the more I knew, the more I would understand, but knowing something is different than understanding it. I did decide what each stage of my life should be. I always wanted to be spontaneous, but I just never could. I wanted to be exactly the person I am today, sitting in my chair waiting for my alarm to go off at 6:13am. But now, I can’t remember the last time I enjoyed what I wrote or what I did.

The ability to touch people’s lives in a way that they do not even realize till they sit contemplating their own existence is something that is always appealing. How I longed for the old feeling I used to have. I wanted the anticipation and the joy that came for allowing my mind to travel into all different directions. The light that showed up in a teacher’s eyes, the laughter that filled a classroom, and the feeling of needing to go dig through a book to answer the thousand questions in my head. I thought back to my own classes now and how the students sat idly staring at me to tell them what would be on a test. The questions asked were simple: Would it be multiple choice or short answer? How much extra credit would they receive? And would I be willing to place a review sheet on Canvas? Each time a question was asked I wanted to yell, but I could not blame them. I had become what the system teaches all of us be. I thought once I could challenge it and make it better, but like most I simply answer, “multiple choice,” “ten points,” and “yes.” I stared at my neatly framed degrees hanging around my bookshelf. I no longer yearned for the life of knowing nothing, but instead I lived in the world that prided itself on knowing everything.

My sight shifts back to that stupid thread sticking out from my yellow chair. I knew what I wanted to do, but by now you can probably tell just as much as I what will end up happening. I twiddled it once more before sitting my book down to retrieve the scissors. Maybe one day I will have the nerve to pull it up. To destroy my consistency, but for now I simply stop to think what could happen if I jump or walk away from it all. Would my younger self proud or disappointed? I had always thought I was better than the rest, snipping the unknown before it could destroy my reality. The longer I ponder over what I have become, I can’t help but I think the opposite. For once, instead of walking away from the chance, I simply sit the scissors on my nightstand, climb into bed, and wait for my alarm. I suppose the string will still be there poking above the rest waiting for me at 6:13am.