Losing.

We’ve all done it. Women. Men. Straights. Homosexuals. Bisexuals. Young. Old.
We’ve all lost ourselves in the throws of a relationship. We’ve all let our guard down (rightly to do so) and let our prior inhibitions, beliefs, responsibilities, and sometimes, relationship fall to the wayside.
Once we lock eyes with a potential lover, mate, or partner, we lose a part of ourselves. I truly don’t believe we realize when it happens. First we start spending our free time with the new person in our life, and skipping the afternoon yoga session. Next we start spending weekend trips with them out of town and pass on lunch dates with friends, visits with family, all because we wish to spend every waking moment we can with the person.
And slowly but surely, each meeting we spend with the new person in our life, we somehow undoubtedly lose ourselves. We evolve ourselves to mold into the new person’s life. And vice versa; both parties are at fault. We so desperately want the other to like/love/lust us that we reimage ourselves into who we “think” they want us to be. And it is in that shedding of new skin that we lose who we were originally.
Once we’re in a committed relationship for say, a year, we become this other person. After a year goes by and for some reason or another we find ourselves single again, we are left dazed, hurt, and lost. Lost with so much time to our evenings and nights. Hurt from the emptiness we feel in the space in our chests. Dazed because it happened in a whirlwind of now memories and forgotten feelings.
This rings true for our relationship with the person and with our souls. Our self. Our being. During the year of the relationship we lost what we enjoy most out of life; early morning coffee, spontaneous trips downtown, drinks with friends on the weekends, and long lazy reading marathons on Sundays. We lose these things because we make room in our life for the other one in our life. We lost these things because we thing they’re not important, or we’ll pick them back up again, or we really didn’t enjoy them that much. So much falseness to this. When we lose these things, these little adventures with ourselves during the day, we lose the ability to be comfortable with being alone with ourselves.
And when it comes to it, we will be the only one with us when it’s closing time, when it’s midnight laying in bed (whether you have a sleeping body with you or not), and laying in a hospital room downtown, your family around the bed you’ve inhabited for the last day, the breaths bated as they watch your hands lay still, your chest slow to a restful pace, and your eyes begin to fade. We are along in all these moments. And yes, that’s terrifying, but inevitable. And we have to realize that. It is better to start young, to start spending time with yourself. Take your bicycle and ride it on the sidewalk downtown. Grab a book and take yourself to the new coffee shop in town. Splurge and buy yourself a fancy dinner. Because we aren’t guaranteed to have someone there to do it for us. We aren’t always, without a doubt, given a chemistry lab partner to help with our homework. And if we don’t have anyone to do all of this for us, who will?
We. Us. Him. Her. Me. You.

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