What Makes Me Tick

Have you ever felt that sensation in your heart, your soul, and your mind, that just makes you feel a purpose? Does it make you feel relief from the stressful world around us? Does it make you feel calm, alive, and amazing all at once? Does it make everything seem like when it is just you and that one thing the whole world has just stopped clean in its tracks, and everything right now is just blissfully perfect? I have and I couldn’t even begin to describe the magic of it. It’s not only my hobby, it also my job. It is the very thing that makes me tick ad keeps me going when things are dark and grey!

I could sit here all day and write about how my husband and kids are my life. Which let’s face it, they are! However, everyone needs that release, that joy, that one thing that sets them aside from everything else in life and makes them, well, them. For me this is jewelry making. You want to talk beads and things? I am your girl! You want to talk about macramé and where to begin? Ask me! You want to discuss earrings and dangles made by hand? Again, that would be me! I am so passionate about it I just don’t know where to begin.

When talking about beads and what got me so interested starts early on in my teenage years. When I was 12 years old, I was diagnosed with bipolar depression. Doing crafts was the only thing that helped me in my time of struggles. I started with crochet, then went to scrapbooking, then did photography. Many crafts later and many unfinished projects that just sat and collected dust as if the dust bunnies had thrown the biggest party of the century, I joined a macramé class with my school. At that point I was 13 years old. I absolutely fell in love with the tying of knots and stringing of beads. The thing I loved most was that most projects I could finish in an hour or less. Hemp became the “in” thing for me. It was so peaceful, and it put my ever so racing mind to rest. Anytime something bad happened I was making macramé. Any time something good happened, I celebrated with macramé. It was wonderous! Macramé made me just feel alive and worth something more. I felt if I could just make art, it would make me shine in ways others maybe lacked. It was me. It was something that made me feel the importance of a millionaire. It was almost addictive, this fine feeling of complete ecstasy that this made me feel.

A few years later I struggled harder with this depression that threw me into a funk years earlier. This time nothing helped, not even the macramé that I had grown to love so much more. I ended up hospitalized for many years due to the severity of my depression that I fell into. Nothing pleased me anymore and soon I forgot all about the ecstatic feeling and the joy that twisting the knots in my hands made me feel. I forgot about the beads, the creativeness that dwelled inside that just wanted an escape, and I had forgotten who I was.

Year after year I got a little older. I got feeling better through intensive therapies and medication management. However, something still lacked in my life. There was something that I missed so much but I could not put my finger on it. I felt alone, I felt like I just needed love. I got married and had a child. Shortly after having my first born, I fell into another deep depression. Postpartum depression is the worst pain I have ever experienced, or so I had thought. The divorce that followed was the most excruciating thing I have ever experienced in my entire life. I never wanted to let it go. The pain was like daggers in my heart and a hole in my soul. I needed some kind of release. I needed something that made me feel human. I wanted to feel alive again. I started painting when I remembered how “crafts” had made me feel in the past. I never once thought maybe it was just one certain craft, one certain thing that made me tick the way that beads, and macramé did.

Many years later I met a good friend of mine. Let’s call this friend Suzy for the sake of the story continuing. Now, Suzy was a good roommate of mine. She cared about many things and very much was interested in my happiness. She had a ton of beads, and she knew how much crafts made me happy, and she asked if I wanted them as she never really used them and thought with my artistic abilities, I could make something quite gorgeous with it. All she asked was that she could have some of the stuff I made in return for getting me started. This amount of beads was a huge moving box full. I didn’t even know what to do with it all. Sorting, organizing, and figuring out where to put it all was only the beginning of the brilliant adventure that soon became my life.

As the days went on, I noticed how affordable a hobby like this was. Can we say, “major score”? I was able to continue getting beads and things I needed to keep it going for an exceptionally long time at a very affordable price. As a person who at that time solely relied on government assistance and social security to fend for herself and her family this was a very tremendous perk for sure. I started making necklaces and bracelets, then eventually got into earrings too.

While going through the aisles of Walmart one day when shopping for supplies I saw hemp and other colors of macramé material and I was just triggered. It was like a DeJa’Vu type feeling. Where have I seen this stuff before and why does it make me feel enraged with the blissful feelings of happiness I haven’t felt in forever. Then, I remembered all those years ago. THIS is what got me through everything bad in my life before I must try it again! Soon enough I realized that all the jewelry making processes were an ecstatic experience just waiting for me to unravel the joys of their magic. The artist in me was like a cherry blossom ready to burst into existence.

Just when I thought my life was perfect and nothing could go wrong Suzy passed away during labor. Suzy had a bad addiction problem that turned her away from her friends, her family, and God himself. Sex, drugs, and rock and roll really was the death of her. She had died in labor with her son which was triggered by an overdose of heroin which not only killed her but her child as well. It was an incredibly sad day for us all. Her boyfriend shortly after became my roommate as I helped him on the path to sobriety.

Mourning the loss of Suzy was especially hard for me. Beading made me remember her daily as I used the beads, she had given me many years ago. Eventually they ran out and I had to buy more. Her spirit lies within these beads I feel. She was always a calm, grounding, and collected spirit and I feel as if when I bead it keeps her spirit alive in ways.

Current days I bead in my free time to escape all the world’s troubles. I bead to celebrate big things. I make the masterpieces up mentally in my mind and create them into existence through the wonders of creation and the talent of my hands. I now run a business making and selling my art all over the world. I have sold not only in the USA but also in Indonesia, Canada, and other various countries. I love it, it is my passion. My goal is not only to create the art but to have others enjoy it as well. I market on Facebook and run it through Shopify. If my art could bring happiness to me, why couldn’t it bring happiness to others as well? Well, it certainly can, and it will!

I would like to say everyone could do this and that everyone should, but honestly you must do you. You must do what makes YOU tick. This is mine and it will be for all of eternity!