Among the Lost

*Disclaimer: This isn't really funny, but I've been stuck on what to write about lately, so I just wrote what I was thinking about. Welcome to my multi-faceted, emotional brain everyone...

Have you ever lost something really important? Something that you find yourself looking for again and again, even though you know it’s gone? You can close your eyes and see it sitting there, as it always was, but when you open your eyes, as if by bitter magic, it has disappeared; lost to the world as if it had never existed within that space.

People lose keys, money, sunglasses, and wallets. While inconvenient, the void that swallows these items is forgiving in nature. In fact, it barely nicks the surface of our lives in the long run. We grumble and protest, but quickly scab over and replace the tiny knick knacks that have become embedded in our daily ways.

  On the other hand, some people lose jobs, houses, cars, lifestyles, and perceived identities. This type of loss is bigger, and therefore, carries with it a larger ripple across our existence. Having a pronounced piece of your worldly life taken away levels you to a different altitude, a lower, more humbling panoramic view of life. You are still human. You are still intact. But inwardly, you must build yourself back up again. This time, hopefully, with a foundation stronger in integrity and balance than what was used in your previous structure.  

Some days our lives are so chaotic, we feel as though we’re losing our minds. As if they have abandoned our bodies, and left us to manage the muddled uproar of life unattended. We can lose sleep worrying, about things we have no control over; about situations that will never be remedied at 3:00 a.m. by pacing a path of carpet and tile, carpet and tile, carpet and tile.

Less abstract could be the loss of a loved one. This feeling of losing someone can be hollowing, as if a giant hand has scooped out your insides and sewn you back up. You face your familiar world with strange eyes, unseeing, and the gravity that holds you to earth is a leaded weight, crumpling your empty shell of a form. Accompanying this can be a loss of hope. Losing an ideal for the way things ought to be and should have been and will never truly be, ever.

With most of these, there comes a time when the looker, stops looking; whatever the object, whatever the value, it will not or cannot be found within reason. Some things cannot be fixed, or replaced, and searching for the piece in its original state becomes painful, and unhealthy.   When this happens, the lost status, or memory, or relationship undergoes transformation. Curiously, it is no longer lost, but rather, transitions itself into something new; a solid, well-worn piece of the owner, a building block of their story, a lesson that was learned. Suddenly, the owner doesn’t see the symbol as missing but rather uncovered. It is given a new place, a new format, a new look, but represents everything that came before it.  

I feel as though I have lost many things, the importance in each piece increasing as I get older. As you enter the land of grown-ups, the world loses a touch of its shininess, and you realize that some things are destined to be lost in a tangled web of circumstances and complications. As I rack up all of my losses, adding them up in long columns, an idea tugs at me that I find hard to ignore. 

What if, instead of thinking of me as this solitary person who has lost their surroundings, what if it is my surroundings that have lost me? Somebody, somewhere, could be turning over rocks, calling into canyons, biting their lip, looking for me; because I’m lost. I am among the lost things. Among the treasures that are hiding under the bed, seeing your eyes scan across me but missing me entirely; floating from thing to thing, untethered by ownership, by home, by belonging. Whatever will happen to me? Who, in this world, will find me, hidden in a crevice, in that space between the mattress and the wall, dig me out, dust me off, and estimate my potential value? Many times, we blame others for what it is that we have lost. They took it, they used it, they had it, and now it’s not here. But at other times, we honestly cannot do that. And who can you blame, in the unfortunate business of losing yourself? The blame game is halted, the finger tapping aimlessly, with no one at which to point.

In the end, we are all the losers of such precious things, and the finders of unexpected treasures. Our lives catalogue the give and take between the roles, and our internal growth is marked by the absence or presence of these objects, these people, these ideals. Indeed though, we are all, inescapably, lost. Lost to ourselves, lost to each other, knowing our circumstances only by the fact that we recall a time when we were not so. And we wait for a time when we will no longer be so, for a hero that we cannot predict an image of, and for our surroundings to take notice that we are, in fact, no longer even there. It is the latter, which becomes the hardest to endure.