The Jelly Jar

I don't know if other people do this.  But for me, the strangest things can take on symbolic importance.

I have a cheap little plastic three-drawer storage unit in my bathroom.  One of the things that lives in the top drawer thereof is a glass pint jar.  I don't know what it originally held, but it LOOKS like a jelly jar, so I'll call it the jelly jar. The lid's been gone for years. It's functioned as my bathroom glass for when I need to brush my teeth, take pills, or just get a drink.

The jelly jar and I have been through a lot together.  The jelly jar did hard time in the months before my diagnosis, when I would drink it dry three or four times in a row, multiple times a day and sometimes multiple times a night.  So, the jelly jar has been my friend.

But the jelly jar has also been my enemy.  Well, not enemy, exactly, but a potential danger.  My bathroom floor is hard tile. I realized very shortly after my diagnosis two years ago that keeping a readily-breakable glass object in a room where I'm often barefoot was not a good plan, and that I should replace the jelly jar with something plastic.  It took me eighteen months (just how crazy does that sound?????), but I finally did get a small plastic container that works well.  But the jelly jar has remained in its drawer, both an old friend and a symbol of an extremely simple thing I could do for my health but which I haven't done. 

This morning, I threw away the jelly jar.