Fray – I. Crest

-The image that comes to mind is that of thread. Not thread wound into something sizeable, a bundle of weak frays, but rather thread in its abundant weakness, the thread that frays. The fray that tugs at the armor of a sweatshirt slowly convincing other threads, knit tightly, to give into their weak constitution. A chain of frays that become the slow unraveling and eventual demise of that sweatshirt, the one you wore on those occasions when you felt you needed a little something, some kind of reminder, perhaps of an accomplishment, perhaps of your value, that little emblem, that logo, that icon of strength, however minute. You wore it then. You wore it and it helped you to smile on those occasions when you did. Now, because of that first fray, having convinced fray after fray to not pretend strength, the sweatshirt is no more than the loose tattered frays left along the passages of your journey.
Sometimes you find them. At night, when you crawl into your cold lonely bed they are there. They are the tiny impediment to sleep that wakes you when after hours of tossing and turning, when you’re about to slip into that state of unconsciousness and rest, that little tattered and abandoned fray dislodges itself from between the pillow and its case and in that long breath you take, manages to find its way into your trachea and constrict air, causing you to cough like a TB patient. You manage to dislodge it, but by then the coughing fit has undone any chance of a solid night’s rest; R.E.M., unconsciousness, shattered at the bed’s foot. You lay there, fatigued and wishing for nothing more than oblivion. Your muscles feeling bruised, pained, weak. Your eyes water every time you open them to the cold night air. You want to sleep, you want to forget, but you can’t and you don’t. You start thinking about every fray, every thread, the demise of that sweatshirt, the demise of you.
You first wore it long ago, the sweatshirt. It had been hanging on a rack. It spoke to you. You needed it, you knew you needed it and you took it, plopping down the little plastic card you had seldom used. You thought “I’ll afford it later, I need it now.” As soon as the transaction had been completed, you took it outside, away from the racks and you put it over your head and let it slip onto you. It covered you; it protected you in some weird way. You had never thought of clothing as being protective, not in the way you felt the sweatshirt protect you. It felt good; its soft touch over you, its shielding quality around you. You breathed more deeply. You breathed more confidently. Good solid inhalations, no more broken streams entering your lungs. It said something about you; that emblem, that icon, that little image scrawled across the front of it. It was like a crest speaking of your composition, your accomplishment, your achievement. You pushed out your chest and wore it proudly, feeling safely protected behind its cotton and wool blend.
It produced more smiles along the journey of your quotidian existence. At the time you simply correlated the greater prevalence of elation to a certain change in your life, one that made you content in a way you hadn’t been before. Perhaps it had to do with this sense, now welling up in you, this sense of being in control, of being handed the reins to your own destiny. It was this feeling that helped you walk across the campus of your university with pride and purpose. It was this same feeling which motivated you through your days as you went from one class to the next, from work shift to study session at the coffee shop where you used to meet your friends. The same place you had sat at and stared out the window, wondering about the future, previously, before the purchase of the crest you now wore daily.