Buying Back My Gravity for $23
It doesn’t look like a beginning.
It looks like a secondhand Epson Stylus Pro 3880. Big. Heavy. Silent. Unassuming. A printer built for gallery-quality prints—but even more than that, a hulking metaphor parked in the trunk of my car, waiting.
It’s still there.
I pick it up yesterday, but today’s the day the meaning lands with full weight. And maybe it hits harder because the rain finally showed up—soft, insistent, like it’s got something to say. The kind that doesn’t ask for your attention, just soaks into your skin and your questions until you’re too drenched to pretend you don’t feel anything.
Backstory: Boxes and Chaos
Yesterday was supposed to be simple. I’ve got boxes of old clothes in my backseat—fabric from a former self. I used to wear 2X shirts and 44-inch pants. Now? Medium fits without resistance. 34-inch waist. I’m carrying the remnants of a body—and a life—that doesn’t fit anymore.
The plan is clinical: drop off the donations, keep moving.
No metaphors. No moments.
But thrift stores have gravity. They hum with chaotic sacredness. A weird museum of lost timelines. A place where forgotten objects pulse with the residue of old lives. I can’t help it—I wander.
I walk past a duck-shaped dish that looks weirdly judgmental. Past a clown lamp that feels one short circuit away from starring in a horror film. There’s a faded T-shirt that says “YOLO” in a font that screams midlife crisis. And on a lone clearance shelf? A sad, abandoned “Live, Laugh, Love” pillow—like even the other pillows have staged an intervention against its toxic positivity.
It’s beautiful, in the messiest way. Every cracked plate, every questionable slogan, every out-of-fashion jacket once mattered. To someone. Once.
I’m not looking for anything.
But then I find a book. Chaos Theory and Hope. Scientific, not sentimental. Somehow, that feels more like salvation than anything pretending to offer answers.
Then I drift, almost without thinking, to the electronics aisle. Maybe to find a gadget for the kids. Maybe because chaos theory whispers: there’s always another layer.
That’s when I see it.
The printer.
Massive. Stoic. Under the electronics testing counter like it’s just another DVD player with abandonment issues.
Tag reads: $35.
I don’t even know what it is yet. I Google it. Gallery-grade output. Retail: over $1,000. I ask for a discount. They say yes. I slap on a donor coupon from the clothing drop. And just like that, I walk out carrying a piece of someone else’s dream—for $23.
Still, I don’t bring it inside.
Because some anchors aren’t ready to be hoisted the second you find them.
Anchor, Not Answer
This isn’t some brand-launch fairy tale.
This isn’t “build a business in 10 easy steps” energy.
I’m not chasing reinvention. I’m chasing reality.
And sometimes reality shows up in the form of an unwieldy, half-forgotten machine that smells like old toner and possibilities.
The printer doesn’t save me. It doesn’t promise me anything.
It just exists.
And in a world that keeps asking me to ghost myself, existence feels like rebellion.
It tells me: You can build something. From here.
Prints. Zines. Glyphs. Beauty without branding. Expression without permission slips.
Rain and Memory
Not yesterday. Today.
Today, as the rain falls—not in sheets, not in storms, but in that soft, relentless way that sneaks into your cracks and fills them.
The kind of rain that doesn’t dramatize your pain, just insists on its existence.
It feels like memory made real again.
And my mom is here.
Not physically, no. But in every drop. In the steadiness. In the quiet courage. In the way the rain refuses to stop just because the world is busy.
When I was small, rainy days were sacred. We’d sit under a cracked patio roof or in the front seat of a foggy car, just listening. Not talking. Not fixing anything. Just letting the rain say what we couldn’t.
Today, I miss her—not out of grief, but out of love.
A love that’s not gone, only moved.
Tender. True. Unbreakable.
My heart is heavy, not because I’m drowning, but because I’m finally floating with something instead of against it.
Not a Sign. A Shift.
This isn’t destiny. This isn’t some grand plan finally unfolding.
This is inheritance—not of blood, but of possibility.
Because sometimes, an anchor isn’t a memory or a person.
Sometimes it’s a heavy piece of technology forgotten in a thrift store, waiting for someone who still believes that building things matters.
I have many anchors.
My children.
The memory of my mother.
My brothers. Their wives. My nieces and nephews.
People who tether me to life when my own hands falter.
But this?
This printer is different.
This isn’t about someone else anchoring me to stay.
This is me anchoring myself—to what’s possible.
To what I’m capable of.
Maybe it once belonged to an artist chasing dreams bigger than their apartment. Maybe to a business owner whose ambitions stretched just one season too thin. Maybe to someone who isn’t even here anymore, but whose story now folds into mine.
Whatever it carried for them—it carries hope for me now.
The Grove doesn’t bloom today. Oddthentics doesn’t print itself into existence overnight.
But something takes root.
I touch the box.
I carry it home.
And for the first time in a long time,
I don’t just believe I can stay—
I choose to.
English