A few years ago I took all of my old t-shirts from high school and I very unceremoniously went at them with a pair if scissors. I have very little recollection as to why.

I could no longer wear them, so I put them in a box under my bed and let the box gather dust and I forgot about the t-shirts, as I tried very hard to block out memories of high school. As one does.

Yesterday I took the tangled mess of mutilated fabric out from under the bed and cut it into strips. I knotted the strips together into longer strands, and then braided the strands together into a rope. When you coil the rope around in a spiral on a level plane, you might end up with something like a rag rug.

This afternoon I dropped off the rope at the home of a friend who has a sewing machine, and they’re going to transform the rope into a rug, for me.

The thing about rag rugs is that they can just keep growing. Forever. So long as there are more sacrificial t-shirts, bedsheets, scraps of fabric, the circular rug can increase in circumference until it extends to the edge of the world…

It feels good that I’ve done something with one of the boxes under my bed. It feels good to make some progress, and to create something.

As I handled this fabric, memories from high school flooded back. Some of them still make me nauseous. Others, I found… no longer had any power over me.

That felt good.

It’ll be nice to have somewhere for my feet to land when I step out of bed in the morning. Good to have something between me and the cool surface of a wooden floor.

“Stomp all over the memories,” my sister chimes in.

Here for it.

I hope it’s a good night.