I was pretty sure this ring was lost until it turned up yesterday morning in the pocket of a pair of work pants I hadn’t worn since last fall, I think–(but who knows at this point in the pandemic?). I was ridiculously happy–not because I love the ring so much (I do love the ring; it’s deerskin and black pearl, and I bought it from a woman at the Lihue Community Market on Kauai) but because I hate losing things.
I really mean that. If I go looking for something and can’t find it, I will probably put a bunch of tasks on the back burner and be late to some other things while I tear apart my whole house and text all my friends to see if they borrowed it or I left it at their house or….
This…does not seem entirely normal. So, after I spent an hour the other day tearing apart my house looking for a different ring that ultimately turned up in another pants pocket (I clearly should stop putting rings in pants pockets), it occurred to me that I should spend a little time reflecting on why I hate losing things so much.
Here are the reasons that didn’t make the cut:
- It’s not because I’m particularly attached to or invested in material possessions. I purge my belongings all the time. I have never pined after a house I moved out of, a car I sold, or a bracelet from my ex that I sent to Goodwill.
- It’s not about control either. I don’t care if my drawers are disorganized (they are) or if my reading glasses are on this table or that one. I don’t care how the housecleaner cleans my house or how my friends load the dishwasher. I can’t be bothered to micromanage stuff or people.
- It’s not about failure: I actually find failure challenging and motivating in a positive way (see the Saga of the Soufflé Pancake).
No, I think my hatred of losing things comes from a combination of two related preoccupations–one with self-actualization and one with permanence.
The self-actualization part means that I can’t stand not being able to do what I intend. This is also why breaking things drives me crazy. I don’t want to break things. I don’t want to lose things. That I do it anyway is infuriating to me because it’s like through the loss or the breakage, I somehow lose a piece of evidence that I’m real and can act on the world.
The permanence part means that in my head everything lasts forever: things, animals, people, stories. I simply cannot accept that things stop being. “To everything there is a season” platitudes make me grind my teeth. I’ve been this way since I was a kid and burst into tears at the end of Cinderella because I didn’t want the story to end. Endings unhinge me. I’ve tried to learn to accept them, to capitulate in the face of loss and death. I’ve had plenty of opportunities to practice. But it turns out I’m constitutionally incapable.
Where did my rejection of endings come from? Who knows? It could be childhood attachment issues. I might reject endings because I believe in God and Eternity or that rejection could be why I decided to believe in God and Eternity in the first place. All I know is this refusal to accept loss and death is absolutely fundamental to my character. And at this point, it’s not gonna change. (As my friend Seth used to say of legacy glitches in software packages he supported: “It’s not a flaw, it’s a feature.”)
This is why I was so happy when I found the ring today. Because even though I had intellectually accepted that I had lost it somehow, and perhaps even emotionally accepted it (or just gotten over it), spiritually there was this little ghost the ring left behind in my life. And today it was reunited with its body again, to great rejoicing.
I can name the ghost of everything and every person I’ve lost: my red reversible purse with the wood handles and $40 of saved allowance, my grandmother’s class ring, the zip pouch for my fold-up Samsonite backpack, my first Touareg cross, my favorite lavender insulated bottle. My brother, my father, my husband. My friends Diana, Allison, Margaret, Katie. Three of my favorite teachers. My housekeeper Susanne. All of these ghosts haunt me. Some are friendly, and I’m so grateful for their voices in my head, their guiding spirits. Some need to be chased off with burning sage when they come around.
I guess now that I think about it, I haven’t really lost any of these beings; they’ve just morphed into a different sort of presence in my life, one that harks me back to an earlier version of myself, for better or for worse.
Huh. That’s kind of a reassuring thought. I’ll mull it over while I go hunting for the little blue plastic hairbrush with the butterflies on it that I bought at a drugstore in Paris. I swear I remember having it on my last camping trip to the coast.
The Rookery 