bracelets .

*Be forewarned; this post is kind of metaphorical.

I have a wall that is home to my millions of memories.
Moments put in bottles and captured in photographs.
Letters and cards speckled with special stickers on special stationary, those formal group shots and those last-minute polaroids; all flecked about the room.
Disarray? Or simplicity?
A closer look says "neither".
It's an artful accident.
Art in its best kind - natural, random.
The most beautiful masterpieces, the tastiest ice cream flavors, the purest blue acrylics, all created by accident.
I have a wall that is home to my doodles.
Watercolored waterfalls at the arboretum, chalked outlines of a boy I once knew, penciled doves on the back of another failed math test.
Random? Or wonderful?
A deeper thought says "both".
It's the random events we string together like beads on a bracelet that showcase who we are.
Some people string together hundreds of bracelets by the ends of their roads.
Some people's bracelets are beautiful, flamboyant, even, and some people's are dark; basic shades of gray.
Though most we manage to securely fasten about our hearts, some bracelets get lost in the wind.
Some we find again, and others are lost to us forever.
Some people's are secrets - tucked away from anyone else - and some are sported proudly to the world.
Some bracelets are old and some are new.
But despite the millions of kinds of bracelets, everyone seems to find a way to string some together.
The speed in which we puzzle-piece these tokens together varies.
Some, eager, grasp hold of the string at a young age, and others take decades to realize what memories mean.
Me? I used to think I had quite a few; bracelets, I mean.
I used to imagine I had ten, maybe twenty.
But then one day it struck me, and I realized - I'm still just collecting the beads.