Seven And A Half Years Lay Broken On The Floor.

This blog post has been a long time coming. I've had so many ideas in my head, so many thoughts in my brain, yet I have not taken the time to stop and type them for you. Well, to be realistic, for me. I'm stopping myself to take the time to write for myself in this moment. I need for this to be said.

A couple weeks ago, I went to a school spirit competition ("Rubber Chicken") between my school, Lewis and Clark High School, and our rival high school, Ferris High School. It is a basketball game where students from both sides cheer on their team, and the school with the most spirit wins the ultimate prize: Chuck. Chuck is a rubber chicken honored by both schools. Sure, it may sound silly, but it's exciting as hell.

When I got home from the Rubber Chicken, I went upstairs and removed my competition t-shirts. I went downstairs and washed a butt-load of dishes, then went back up to my room, and saw something on my floor. I looked down, and felt my jaw drop.

On my mint green carpeting lay a sprawled out seven and a half years of my life.

On my seventh birthday, I made an exchange with another girl who was in my summer activity kid group at a preschool. I traded her a stuffed snake for a clear choker necklace with black beads on it. The part I didn't tell anyone until many years later was that I had stolen the snake from my stepbrother's room.

Teeheehee.

I donned that choker June 27, 1999, not having the slightest idea of what it would become over the years.

I never took it off.

It was with me for everything. Through the stage in my life when I did not want to turn eight, my obsession with cows, the beginning of my teenage life, and all the daily struggles I faced over years and years of life. Of MY life. After a short time, I no longer felt it on my neck, and it became a "given" that I would wear my black choker necklace. I defended it through everything. And it stayed with me. That is, until a few weeks ago.

Honestly, I'm surprised it lasted that long. It really wasn't supposed to. Especially with what I put it through through; my younger days were spent gaining bruises and scratches to show off to my father and to my friends.

And there it finally lay, seven and a half years of my life, its clear, interweaving strands barely showing on my carpet, its black beads sticking out as if floating, and the spot where it had broken looking almost burned, though in actuality a spot that got irritated, and eventually gave up and split apart.

I am thankful that it waited for a good time to break. It didn't snap at Rubber Chicken, where I surely would have lost it; it didn't snap during school, where someone else may have found it and thrown like it was nothing, because it looks like nothing. It didn't fall in a gutter or bury itself in the bark on a playground.

I'm thankful that it was there for me so many years; even though I didn't think about it often, it was a taken-for-granted comfort. It represented my past and secured my future.

But most of all, I am thankful that it never changed. Its beads have been worn, dulled, and beaten, and its size has stretched to fit my slowly growing neck; but it was a sturdy rock in my life, a security blanket of sorts, though not nearly as hindering as a physical blanket. It never stopped me from doing the things I loved. Never.

In trying to decipher any message I can take from this, I have become utterly and honestly confused. I DON'T know what this represents. I'd like to think that it represents a new beginning, and new age, a new me.

But it's probably just an old, broken necklace.

So, no, I don't know what it means. I don't know how I'm supposed to react, I'm not sure what to do with the remains. I can't decide who to tell, when enough is enough and it's time to move on; how to explain what the choker means to me.

What I know for sure is that I was absolutely devastaded when I walked into my room and found that seven and a half years of my life lay broken on the floor.