Departed Desperation

1. When you’re lost, you feel defeated, taunted. You scream at yourself. You believe you are the only one to blame. When you’re lost, you crack your knuckles and bounce your leg as time slowly continues. When you’re lost, nothing in the world seems real. You are alone.
2. The first time I ever found myself lost was in the middle of the Shopkin aisle at Toys R Us. I ran, ran from them, ran from the idea of being alone. I gave into my pace, ran through every aisle, and tossed my head over my shoulder to check behind me. I lapped the store before I went up to someone, mustering up any sort of courage I could get. I waddled over to the employee at the counter, rehearsing what I was going to say. 

“What’s wrong sweetie?”

“I lost my dad. Can you call for him?”
“Of course, what’s his name?” 

Just as I mustered up the courage to tell the worker my dad’s name, he came running over, laughing. He apologized and took me back to the Shopkin aisle, and my fear turned to anger as he explained he’d been following me the entire time, jumping into aisles as I turned my head. 

The first time I was ever lost was a joke, a lie. 

3. With no definition tied to the phrase, “losing something” seems so minuscule. Two words, both of which are empty yet hold the weight of the universe. When you lose something, whether emotional or tangible, you lose a piece of yourself. Connecting to something, even inanimate, is a basic human characteristic, and often when it is lost, the world can crush onto you and make you feel as if the air is too thick for your lungs. Pain enters your life in a way unknown to the human mind, unmedicated by your soul as if it were a newfound disease.  The suffering isn’t for the object itself, but for the memories it gave you.
4. My sister went away to college when I was six. My sister, my best friend, was hours away and I carried a deep hatred for phone calls. She had still found a way to keep in touch, making me feel important, something she had always been good at. 

I had never understood the beauty of a handwritten letter before being sent my first one. It was our new habit, writing these letters to each other. A way of communicating that was permanent, the letters sitting on my bedside table to read as I got older and life kept going. But now, papers flew around my vanity as I frantically searched for her handwriting. Any other trace of the letters beside the pieces of the envelope that rested in my hands. I didn’t just lose the paper—I lost something that kept my sister and me connected even miles away. I lost a huge part of my elementary school treasures. I lost a piece of me. 

5. When you’re lost but know exactly where you are, it is as if the walls don’t connect and colors can’t reflect. You can look in the mirror and see someone looking back but know that it isn’t you. The brown hair slightly hits your face and masks your eyes. It’s so familiar yet unrecognizable. When you lose yourself, the sound of your name can catch you off guard. 

When you lose yourself it’s hard to know if you could ever come back.

6. I needed to lose you to find me – “Lose You to Love Me” by Selena Gomez
7. The first time I found myself again was when I let you go. Losing you kept me from losing myself. Losing the pain and the anger helped me find who I wanted to be. Who I was.
8. ¨They are the closest to a family I have. They are my family.¨ – My Mom
9. I was raised to believe that family is not blood. Just because we share a last name or have the same grandparents does not make someone family. I determine my family. My family is my life, the ones who have stayed. The ones who drove me anywhere to get out of the house when I needed a breather. The ones who held me when I cried. The ones who knew my secrets and stayed. The ones who opened my eyes to a life outside my own and ensured I always knew I belonged.
10. At first, I leaned away from talking about probably one of the most important people in my life because it felt like too much. After a while, I realized that it wasn’t fair to keep Tony’s life a mystery. My mom met Tony in 2008, a higher-up at the bank she worked at whom she instantly hit it off with. They became closer as the years went by, but he started coming around to our house right before he moved to London. He had grown up close to that area living in and out of Ireland his whole childhood, and with newfound retirement, he wanted to go back overseas. When he was there, he kept constant contact with my family. He even opened his home to us multiple times so that we could experience a new side of the world we never thought we would reach. He left my mom his old car in hopes she would give it to me. He always reminded me that the life we have is worth living the way we want. He may not be on my family tree but he was more of a relative to me than anyone on the burned side of the picture.
11. When your mom sits next to you and grabs your hand tighter than ever before, you know that life will never be the same. No matter how hard she tries to make the news lighthearted, nothing can prepare you for truth that scrapes the inside of your soul. It is as if the world has frozen you, forcing you into denial until your mother can’t help but break, signaling you that it wasn’t a lie. The man who may not have been blood, but was family was now gone. The man who taught you that no matter how hard life may seem, you can find your way out would never be there to tell me his stories of victory again. The man whose wit lit up a room would no longer laugh. The man who was supposed to move to be with family in Ireland would now go, but wouldn’t know it. The man who made sure you stayed true to who you are wouldn’t be on the other side of your mom’s phone calls. The man who put everyone else before himself was taken from those who loved him more than they could explain. 
12. “I swear to God you’re living through everything I’ll ever do. So I will keep you day and night here until the day I die, I’ll be living one life for the two of us.” – Louis Tomlinson “Two of Us”
13. When you lose something, it takes a piece of you that stays with it and gives you a piece of itself in return to fill the gap. When I thought I lost my dad, he gave me a memory that helped a younger me realize the importance of self-awareness while taking some of the childhood freedom. When I lost the letters, they kept my writing and the love in the penmanship while I kept the memories of sitting to write at 5 in the afternoon while the light peered in and trying my hardest to include all of the most eventful moments of that week. When I lost myself I had friends, but when I lost those friends I found myself and a whole new group that was now family. When I lost a piece of my family, he took part of my soul to his new life and gave me his lessons and stories that I can continue to give to those around me.