Collections

Lots of people collect things. Teacups, vases, sports memorabilia, etc...you get the picture. One thing many of us collect is Stamps. I'm not talking about postage stamps. This is more of a metaphor.

Many of us compartmentalize our relationships with people like a page in a stamp album. We start with a nice clean page and we add that first stamp that represents this person. This can be a mint condition stamp or a common everyday stamp or a dirty, torn stamp that doesn't please us but we add it anyway. As our relationship builds, we add more stamps. This increases or decreases the value of our stamp album. The glue we use is strong, we can't remove some of these stamps. Some stamps are so big, there leaves no room for more stamps. Sometimes we try to cover over a stamp but find it hard when that stamp is so big.

I collect stamps. I'm not always happy about my stamp collecting. I sometimes collect other people's stamps for them. These are a sheer copy of their stamps and I let them color over my stamps. Sometimes I'm strong enough to redesign a stamp so I can't remember what it used to look like.

I hand out my own stamps, some of these are glorious stamps, some are decayed and rotting. I keep a page of my own stamps that I go over and over, adding more glue to some, picking at the corners of others. Sometimes a friend helps me remove a stamp, this can be difficult as traces of that stamp are always there.

I wish that I collect Chocolates instead.