Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Need to Stop Looking

The Beaujolais-Villages Nouveau from Maison Albert Bichot was what was exactly needed at the moment. With Christmas week’s worth of pain shooting through my upper back in a spiraling web of misery and the stress of cancelled flights and constantly entertained ideas of my termination at work waiting for me on Tuesday morning, I needed something to dull it all. And despite the much needed ease of distraction State College brought to me this Christmas, the entire ordeal of coming home has revealed to me the kind of person I am inevitably to become: paranoid, obsessive, nervous, longing and lonely. But knowing that never helps. Writing about it does. Sometimes.

I hadn’t had it that long. And when it came, I wasn’t even looking for it, it just happened to be there when I wasn’t seeking it, but later realized it was what I really needed at that time. It wasn’t exactly a wallet per se. It wasn’t just a money clip. It was both things; it was everything I needed it to be. The clever compartment system and slim construction as well as the different features that made it convenient and aesthetically beautiful made it something I needed to have. There wasn’t really much time between when I got it and when I couldn’t live without it; as soon as I left the Gap, all of the most important things went into that wallet. My credit cards, my ID, my UFO card, a note from a friend written when I had first moved here wishing me luck. It was just a beautiful thing. Slim enough to carry around everywhere, had just enough space for the things I needed to have with me.


I can’t recall everything that happened which is essentially what leads to the losing of important things. I got drunk again. That’s it. And once again, I forget to watch myself and more importantly the things I do and then eventually misplace it. All I can remember in the aftermath is just how important it was to me and the bit of hope I clung to that I didn’t really lose it…and that it was just laying around somewhere. I took it for granted…or something like that, but I’m not sure.


All I can remember are the memories from each of those artifacts…how the fucking bartender kept my bankcard that one night because she didn’t like how little we tipped (she sucked). Or how the address and birthdate on the License were wrong. Or how the $6.00 left was from the thick book of $250.00 that so easily slipped into the clip not three weeks ago. Or even how reassuring it was to have that thing in my pocket all the time, so snug, so compact, so natural and convenient.


But it’s gone now. It has been. I know it is. Every now and then I’ll look under the couch or in the car and for some reason have the false hope that it would be there…but as always, I just forget that it’s gone. I just need to breathe and learn to let it go.


I’ve called and replaced both of my cards. I’m going to get the ID this weekend. And I can settle for having lost the $6.00 clipped to its side. Cringing to the idea that someone else has my wallet now, probably using that money God knows where and for what, I’ll never want to know.


It’s destroyed me knowing it’s out there somewhere right now…but I almost wish I don’t find it again. I hope even more that I don’t keep looking for it every chance I get. Because the sooner I might find it and hold it in my hands once more, regardless of all the worth it still has to me…the sooner I can lose it all over again.


And it would be my fault. All over again.