The Loss

It's funny how expectations work.

We go for weeks thinking one thing is going to happen because we have immediate evidence that it will happen--maybe semi-long-term evidence that it will. We've been reassured, we've had multiple discussions, we even make preparation choices. Barring near-disaster, everything should go exactly as one or more parties involved has planned.

I think this is my "plans shot to hell" year. I have no idea why. Perhaps it is because my plans are poor or founded on poor premises or bases. Or, perhaps it is because in some cases, I have selectively subverted my attention from things that exist, maybe even have pre-existed, that could destroy those plans or those expectations with a dose of very sobering, and very unpleasant, reality. Ignoring them or pretending they aren't there when countless times they creep into the woodwork when you least expect it, at least I have realized of late, does not negate their existence and will not do so no matter how much you hope and pray it will.

When you lose something, especially if you have had it at least in part for a long time, you feel that loss. It comes in lots of unexpected forms, too. It could be a song that comes on the radio all of a sudden (which results in a jerk motion to change the channel, landing you in AM territory), or the performance of an action you know you last did right before things "changed" for you (one of those rare times that taking out the garbage or cracking open a beer can lead to uncontrollable tears and a lot of odd looks from family members), or even a forward look to the days ahead that do not have in them what you had before, no matter what it was, with a sigh and a constant need to renew commitment to living without it. Somehow, those negative elements that you were all too in tune with as part of the whole that you once had disappear for you--you lose that objectivity that you had once in favor of the need to pick up the rose-tinted glasses with your overly active memory/imagination because there and only there can you have what you lost, so it may as well be as ideal as it can be.

I've "lost" many times over the course of this past year in many different ways, most of them relating to relationships with other people. I don't have many explanations for that which seem to fit correctly. However, my most recent loss has taught me something important--that sometimes you feel a loss looking back, but it can help you define how you perceive that loss looking forward. Those ideal elements in what you lost that were truly ideal, that were truly uplifting and positive deserve a second look. Perhaps you feel loss for those elements because you ultimately need them. Maybe your losing what you did lose taught you that it is necessary to make you happy, and you should take that new knowledge and find it somewhere else. I used to live with the mentality that when something ended, it ended--and with that, I could and would never find or have what I had ever again. However, I am no longer convinced of that. What you lost taught you what you need to find to be happy, and the possibility that you could find it wrapped in a package that perhaps excludes those things that although your temporary pair of rosy glasses phases out, existed nontheless.

So, maybe with loss should follow hope rather than devastation.

And someday, my objective mind, which I have hope will reboot soon, will come online and register that in reality rather than in theory.