Sometimes I will put a track on repeat—listen to it over and over and over—as I write. Something about the music will hold me in a moment I need to be in to get the words out. Once I am there I will stay there until the words are done. Write. Repeat. Write.
Today I am writing and have a track on repeat, and today I am writing about loss, the deepest loss I have experienced—the loss of self.
In the face of the many homes and friends and families I have lost to all the many wars fought between homes and friends and families I have watched myself insulate and absorb, change and adapt, rebound and recover, and have it happen all over again. I become so accustomed to it I become it. I know I’m a warrior. But I also know I’m a warrior who does not believe in war—I’m often lonely.
A few years ago I needed a friend, but what I got instead was a commercial, a piece of targeted advertising promoting ideas which sounded good to the ear but never materialized in action—your classic snake oil sales rat. Why did I buy? Because I wanted to believe I’d found someone else who believed what I did. I thought I’d found another me, an ami as the French say. But that was the goal—to make me think I had. We all trust ourselves, right?
Make friends with the forest so it doesn’t notice you cut it down. Make friends with the river so you can change its course, pollute it, then bury it. Make friends with the wolf so he doesn’t see all the hot dogs you eat. Flatter the Earth and make it look like you…
What I lost of myself I know is returning. I feel it with each passing day. I claw back what I remember was mine to start with, but until now I hadn’t seen how much I’d forgotten of myself. This is the loss I mourn—a me I liked to be.
I know I will be me again.