A Haunting by Past Me

2,007 days of yearning... so far

Still life with regret © Michelle Spencer, no resuse

Welcome to Armchair Rebel: chronic reflections inspired by life in the slow lane. I hope you’ll feel seen, and find comfort and community here, whatever your current state of health or ability. Disability is the only minority anyone can join at any moment, and that each of us will pass through in our lifetime. That’s not a threat, that’s just how it is.

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I’m doing a bit of decluttering, or trying to.

I’m staring at a pair of tile nippers. They are professional quality, from the Master Tiler’s Association shop, rather than the local big box hardware. They are heavy, designed to cut stone tesserae for mosaic work. Expensive, as is only reasonable, they are not exactly beautiful, not ornamental in any way. They look like they exist to do a job, and do it well and reliably through thousands of iterations.

Only in my imagination are they looking at me reproachfully.

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I bought them in 2020, for an online hands-on mosaic workshop. For several years, since my twin’s death, my birthday present to myself has been a craft experience or short course. A way to learn a new technique or try my hand at a new craft. Something just for me, something that is a want, not a need, that I can allow to be frivolous.

Between booking the workshop and the day of the workshop, I fell sick with the worst flu of my life.

The tutor kindly cut up my tesserae ahead of the class, so that I only needed to trim them a bit, as I knew I would not have the strength to grip and squeeze over and over for a couple of hours. Even so, I was unable to complete any of the mosaic samples as everyone else did. My hands shook then spasmed, my arm muscles twitched and let go, exhausted. My vision blurred from looking at the zoom screen.

The nippers have sat in the storage box with my other mosaic paraphernalia ever since, waiting for the day I am well enough to use them.

2,007 days, so far.

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The matte steel is a chill weight in my hands, cradled in my lap. Regret and nostalgia claw up from my stomach into my throat, like a bird caught in a chimney.

I have a flashback to a previous mosaic workshop in 2016; to being involved and engrossed in sketching outlines and laying the tiles in such a way the eye moves along the finished work; to my delight and pride in the finished piece. I itched to do more. I dreamed of one day laying a mosaic floor panel in my courtyard garden. More than daydreams, I had actual dreams at night when I would feel the stone dust gritty on my hands and arms, the sweat pricking along my back, and the ache in my hips from sitting cross legged on the ground, humming to myself as I worked.

I still want that future.

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Today I wonder, is what I really want that past me back again? I want to have that body again, a body less limited, less disabled than the version I have today, and will likely have next year too. I want to entertain those dreams and have a realistic option to turn them into ambitions, should I choose to.

Is this yearning, or nostalgia?

As the metal warms under my fingers, and a couple of slow tears dry on my cheeks, I feel in my heart, in my gut, that there’s no turning back.

There is only forward, into the unknown future where these nippers and all they embody are a weight I’m no longer willing to carry.

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Thank you for reading, your time and attention are a gift.

Over to you

• Do you have what some minimalists call ‘identity clutter’? Belongings that were used by Past-You and don’t fit your current life, or Future-You who you don’t have time to become? What currently unlikely version of you do you find hard to let go of?

• Do you have a pet dream or ambition that won’t be realised now? I once sat on the Magdalen Bridge in Oxford and wept because I realised I would never be a 19 yo undergraduate riding my bicycle to a tutorial. I hadn’t even known that was a dream, or perhaps a fantasy, but having it crash into reality made my first visit to the Dreaming Spires a bittersweet experience.

• Being realistic about the forseeable future doesn’t mean ‘never’. If I recover enough, I expect I’ll buy more nippers. Have you ever abandoned an activity you loved, only to find that it ‘came back around again’?

• Share your story in the comments, and let’s keep the conversation rolling…