This is an analogy that I thought of as I was listening to women "down the block."
I was sitting in the sewing store with all the other bolts of cloth. We happily talked about how great things were and gossiped about the other bolts of cloth around the corner. Some of the bolts of cloth were shiny, others were bright and flashy, others were patterned, some were plain… We were all happy there in the store. We were comfortable, taken care of, and we were all snuggled in close together and happily blissful in our own little world. I couldn’t think of anywhere I would rather be. This was the life.
I guess that’s not what my life was meant to be, however. I hadn’t been in the store too long, before someone came along and asked to buy me. Suddenly I was taken from the comfort of what I knew and where I belonged. I was thrust out into a world of the unknown. I shivered with cold as I was put into a plastic bag all alone, without the comfort of my friends. Then I was placed in the back seat of a car, with other groceries and shopping bags piled on top of me. I felt humiliated that I would be placed at the bottom – I should be handled with care! I was a beautiful bolt of cloth, and should be seen by everyone. People who saw me in the store thought so anyways.
By the next week, if I’d known what was to come, I would have wished that I could have stayed at the bottom of the pile forever. I thought I’d rather be alone and unnoticed then to go through what I did. No matter how hard I tried to forget my feelings, and forget about the other bolts of cloth and how lucky they were, I couldn’t. My memories and thoughts were all I had. I soon forgot that people actually wanted to see me, I couldn’t imagine anyone liking me. After all, the people who had bought me obviously didn’t like me, or they would have treated me better! They would have put me in their front door way for all to see! But they didn’t.
Instead I was thrown in a cold room with machines and old discarded cut up cloth lying all over. I was horrified! This must be a horrible nightmare! Surely they didn’t think I belonged with all these scraps of used material!
The horror of that moment will NEVER replace the treatment that was to follow, however. At unexpected moments, my owner would come in and cut me up. I thought the first cut was bad, but soon I almost felt numbed by the multiple cuts that ripped me apart. I felt humiliated. When I first came from the store I thought I should have been in a place for all to see, now I just wanted to hide where no one could see me, and most of all to escape my owner. But I couldn’t leave. After all, I was so cut up and ugly, who else would want me now? I was so ugly. I was just like all the other scraps of material in the room. I wished I could escape. I didn’t want to be cut anymore, I didn’t want to feel the pain of past memories, I didn’t want to try so hard to suppress feelings anymore.
It was at this point of my life, that I knew something had to change, or I couldn’t bear it anymore. Things started changing. It was gradual, but my owner took all my pieces of scrap material, and brought me to the machine I first saw when I entered this room of hell – it was a sewing machine. My owner started sewing me together.
It was such a gradual change, that at first I didn’t even realize it was happening. I didn’t even think that these torn up scraps could ever become something. I thought I would be ugly scraps forever. However, as I was sewn together more and more, I began to see a change. It felt so uncomfortable that I didn’t want to change. It’s ironic, how at one point I was so down and wanted so desperately to not look so torn up and ugly, and how I wanted so desperately to have a different life, yet here I was finally having a change and I hated it. I wanted to go back to where I had been before my owner started sewing me up. I didn’t understand it, but I guess it was just because change is never easy, and it made me uncomfortable. I didn’t know what to expect. At least before I knew I was ugly, and even though I never knew when, I knew that I would be cut and torn. Now I never knew what was coming next. Feelings were changing. Old feelings that I’d forgotten about were being stirred up. I was not so sure I wanted to be sewn up, but what in life had I wanted? Life never seemed to treat me fair.
As stitch after stitch was sewn, I began to see myself differently. Maybe I wasn’t so ugly after all. In fact, sometimes I saw my owner looking at me with pride. Shape was beginning to come out of me, and then my owner tried me on. I wasn’t really sure what I was yet, but I was beginning to recognize something, and something was better then scraps. I thought maybe I was going to be a dress. I began to feel better about myself.
Time went by, stitch after stitch was sewn, I still felt uncertain, but my feelings were changing. Soon I knew I was a dress, and then I realized that not only was I a dress, but I was a special dress – a wedding dress. I would serve a purpose in someone’s life. Somebody would be proud to wear me. People would look at me with awe.
Not once do I like those moments that I went through as I was cut and torn and left in a dark room all alone. Yet I have a new look at it now. You see, I wouldn’t have the beauty that I now have if it had never happened. I could use this to may advantage. Unlike the other bolts of cloth left behind, I could serve a purpose. Not that I would wish what I lived through on anyone, but I believe that I now have a beauty and use that none of them would ever have. I have shape and form, I have character, I have a use other then to sit in a store and look pretty. I’ll reach different people then they will.
©2004 Jill Forsyth November 3, 1999 For Personal and Group Use.