Picking Up the Pieces

I recently took a sabbatical from writing, one in which I had no choice in the matter.  After exercising one night I walking to my vehicle, The Silver Steed (SS), as I normally would. I was tired, my coach had just made me run 5 miles all at one time, and if you’ve read my previous entry you know that I am not, nor ever will be about that life.

As I was returning a friend’s call, I hopped in and began the habitual process of starting my car. I was going to drink my recovery shake, chop it up on the phone, go get groceries, and probably catch up on Arrow afterwards (because it was Wednesday).

Everything was normal.

Suddenly, my keen peripheral vision caught site of papers hanging out of my glove compartment. My eyes leaped from the open glove compartment, to its contents strewn across the front seat – I simultaneously heard a rustle of the wind – synchronously my vestibulo-occular reflex turned my head to the back seat where behold! – SS’s starboard back window was nowhere to be found.

It was at this moment that an expletive may or may not have bellowed from deep within me, while my friend exclaimed, “AGAIN!?” Yes, again bro! Dread ripened in the pit of my stomach and metastasized over me in a cephalic to caudal manner as I bolted out of the car to check the contents of my back seat. My ergonomically friendly messenger bag with my most important belongings was no longer there.

Years of work, meaningful gifts, and my identity were all gone. Just like that, and there was absolutely nothing that I could do in that moment to get them back. I was shocked, disheartened, alone, and violated. So is the life of man sometimes, right?

In my reflections of the matter in the following hours, days, and now several weeks – I’ve accepted the fact that it was just stuff (which by the way, is a great conclusion to allow someone to come to in their own time), but it has been difficult to deal with the ramifications that this act of thievery has placed on my mind.

You see, my mind works by placing events and feelings together in a conglomerate that scaffolds together. And like a fictitious spider web, if you strum one cord, the rest of the lattice hums along with it.

Questions that clouded my mind like The Riddler to Bruce Wayne:

How do you pick up the pieces [of glass]? How do you not worry about what you will eat for dinner because you have no money? How do you walk to SS now without feeling as though she has been dismantled? How do you not worry in general? How do you not worry about your grandpa’s ever-increasing dementia? How do you move past your feelings of inadequacy? How do you deal with not getting into that school? How do you deal with he/she continuing to blot you out of their life? Am I still going to want to do this job in a decade?

Am I still talking about myself? When the fourth wall breaks...

Emotional baggage can weigh heavily on the mind, but that doesn’t mean it should take a metaphorical tumble off of a cliff.

I’m reminded that I only hold the reins on my own actions, and that this bridle is nominal when it comes to other people or the workings of this world. I’m reminded that I should back up my computer a little bit more frequently. I’m reminded that I don’t know what tomorrow holds for myself, or SS, but I know Who holds tomorrow.