I ordered a heart rate monitor to help me work out better in my target zones, and of course like any new toy I’ve been wearing it everywhere and testing my heart rate. SO FREAKING COOL! But then, I am pretty easily amused.
The girls get here Friday, and I’m building scrapbooks for my nieces, so I find myself at the scrapbook store a lot lately. Usually I run down on my lunch break and snag a bunch of stuff so I can spend the second half of my day glancing at the bag of goodies on the floor by my desk and wishing I were already home so I could be cutting and laying papers, aging edges with inks and building pages. Those days at work go by terribly slow as I check the time every five minutes.
Yesterday I bolted down to Michaels at lunch to get some finishing touches. Martha Stewart has a new scrapbooking line and according to my heart monitor – it boosts my heart rate up ten bpm. Interesting. Then as I was perusing the new Brenda Walton designs from K&Company and was struck suddenly by an overpowering sense of sadness. A longing that came from the very bottom up.
I miss having a lover to scrapbook for. I miss arranging moments of my life with someone on beautiful pages for safe-keeping.
I suddenly felt this wave of times I’d stalked Reggie with a camera in hopes of catching him in a far away thought so I could build a layout and remember it ten years down the road. I used to take my camera everywhere we went and caught pictures of ridiculous things like leaves in the gutter or a clock in the background so I could set up a series of things to help me track and remember the progression of our lives together.
It seems so stupid now. I used to build pages of just things I loved about him. His hair, his computer, his fencing equipment, his eyes… like mini alters that I wanted to leave behind so someone knew how amazing he was, how much he was loved by me, how proud I was to have him as my partner.
I captured a lot of his life in journals and pictures and albums, but as I unpacked my pod and cleaned out my boxes I threw away tons of these shrines. I kept the important moments that define me as I am, but it occurred to me as I was cleaning – that I didn’t have that kind of record of myself. I had defined myself by him for so long – I didn’t bother to try to capture anything about my life but what I thought was valuable… and that was Reggie.
And had I to do it again, I know I’d do the exact same thing. Scrapbooking it artful remembrance and I only scrapbook the parts of my life I don’t want to forget. Of late I mostly only scrapbook for other people, building albums for them to help them do their own remembering. But after standing in the store yesterday, I now realize that I need to start building for myself again.
I have not scrapbooked the 4,600 pictures that I took in the last two years. I took pictures of things I love and then I filed them away and haven’t touched them, mounted them on papers or decorated the edges with pride. I have locked them away.
I want to love someone enough to have them in my books again. It’s silly and perhaps creepy, but metaphorically, my scrapbooks are an extension of my heart and what I keep in my heart – I display for all the world to see on my shelves and coffee tables, in pretty books made with colorful papers and big glossy images.
I know it’s ridiculous, but even though I have love in many other forms – it is not translating to my everyday life because I don’t have a visual outlet… does that make sense? I have not been honoring the things I treasure in an art my soul can process.
So anyway, it seemed very fitting and symbolic that finally, after three years… I was wearing a heart monitor and shopping for supplies and felt such an overpowering need to open a new chapter, create a new book and feel and honor love again in a way that brings me joy. It’s time to love again. It’s time to share my scrapbooks with people. It’s finally time.
Okay. Ms. Sappy Pants is signing off to go blow her nose.
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