Day 1

Write about something you lost.

I don't like thinking about lost things. Lost things make me sad, thinking of the little trinkets and nic-nacs in gutters and between couch cushions, the lost words in the wind and the lost years spent in pursuit of goals never achieved. It's difficult for me to think about anything I've lost because it means that I will remember how I felt when I had whatever it was I misplaced. The good luck charm I kept in high school, with thirteen different symbols of how I felt about my life. Where is that now? My trusty knife that always stayed in my pocket. Did I leave him behind? The lost hours of rest, pushing through hard training and lonely nights, when the only light seemed to be the harsh fluorescent above my bed that illuminated every flaw of the barracks walls. Walls so old that they seemed to have thousands of cracks, and if I closed my eyes the ceiling would come tumbling down.
Where are the lost days of happiness, the times when I could have been smiling and carefree? If I hadn't signed on the dotted line, would I be where I am now? How many answers to questions have I lost by not asking them, and could the answers to those questions have saved a man's life?
Once, there was a watch I had. I remember the flat black plastic band, how it felt around my wrist, thicker than the other watches I owned because it held an atomic clock with a GPS. $175 I spent on that watch, and when it came I was so excited; I had never owned anything so expensive in my life. It survived a week, and then it was gone. Did someone steal it? Or was I just careless with a fine piece of merchandise.
I feel that as the years wind, I lose more time than anything else. Time runs in rivulets, they say, but really time to me feels like the first attempt at driving a manual shift transmission. Steady. Stop. Grind. Crunch. Stall. Forward and on until crunch. Stop. Go. Stop. Time only goes slowly when you watch the clock, or when you don't want something to happen. The rest of the time, you lose it in leaps and bounds.
There was a lot I lost when I fell down the stairs. I lost days and weeks under the medication, and when I refused to take it I lost the thing which had been such a part of my identity that, even now, years later, I still wake up at night looking for my boots.
I don't like thinking about things I've lost.
But, I've lost a lot of my illusions too. If there is anything worth losing, it's your illusions. Maybe that's what I'll write to my son in the book I write to him.
I lost the loneliness, the deep and hateful sense of being alone. Now, I lose days of silence and contemplative thought in exchange for changing diapers and driving from one place to another.
Those things I don't mind losing. Silence and loneliness are good for the soul, but only in doses in the hundredth of a percent. Too much time on my own makes me stir-crazy, and strange ideas come into my head which I can't lose.
I'm glad to be lost of the people and things that drug me down and caused me anguish over the years. I think everyone is, but it's still hard sometimes to think about the places you used to go, the things you used to do, and the people who were in your life that made it better at the time. In hindsight, they probably weren't worth the trouble.
I've lost the sense of dread I feel for the moment of death I know will come. When I was young, I watched the Terminator movie, and it terrified me when he went down into the molten metal, and his red eye blinked out of existence. Wouldn't that loss be the worse, I used to think. Now, even my short time, I can see that death is nothing but an end, and not a loss, unless it comes too quickly.
I'm glad I haven't lost many friends.
I grieve for those that have.
Most of all, I've lost the desire to make my life harder. Life will be what it will be. I've spent so much time agonizing over this and that, wondering ig the bills will get paid on time or the pain in my knee will subside. If I could lose all the worry, though, I don't think I would, because it lets me know I'm still here. Still trudging down the path. I hope I lose more ignorance in the years to come and more of my illusions. I hope that I lose bad feelings and thoughts, and I hope I keep what I've found, my family and friends and the lessons life has taught me. Those aren't trinkets, but jewels.