Andie.ink

I live with loss in my back pocket.

It’s the what once was and will never be again.

It’s the white little lie I retain.

It’s a chip on my shoulder and a vacancy in my heart.

It’s a thought tucked in the back of my brain.

Loss and I go together like peanut butter and jelly.

It’s the thread that holds my seams together.

Loss is the bacon to my eggs.

The IT to my gutter.

The monster under my bed.

It’s the little sibling that follows me wherever I go,

And the little voice in the back of my head.

We go way back loss and I.

I’ve spent my whole life imagining that the worst will happen because for any child it already did. Everyone around me wondered why I thought, talked and acted in extremes, but they didn’t understand how that was my normal.

It’s normal for me to experience loss because that’s how my life began.

When you loose people try to take away your pain by focusing on what is still good or the good that is to come. But this isn’t a post on hope.

This is about my best friend loss.

Not my best friend’s loss.

My best friend who is loss.

It’s the filter through which I see the world. Not sepia-toned or rose-colored like Elton’s glasses. It’s tinted grey so I see everything in black and white. The world is either good or bad. I’m either winning or losing. There is no middle ground here. No designated “No Man’s Land.”

I’m stuck huddling the trenches stuck in shell shock years after the war was over and everyone else has left. I hurl my grenades at nothing or confused passersby as they recoil from my smell and wonder what’s wrong with me.

This has been my life.

Touting around loss like an enthusiastic first-year college student and their messenger bag.

This is the life of an adoptee.

You can find us sitting with loss sipping our mocha frappuccino latte’s as we watch a world full of color speed by us like we are some sort of superhero who can slow down time while the world around us remains unaware to the tragedy we hold.

So, next time you wonder why we shirk at the simplest things, or react to nothing but a twitch, remember we are lost in the minefields.

It takes a brave soul to tread their way through that field to find us in those tranches. Sometimes we see light on the other side and can tiptoe our way out. Some of us find salvation and relief as we battle invisible enemies slaying them one by one treading around mines and dormant bombs.

But the majority of us stay in the trenches grasping onto the hand of loss because it’s the only comrade who stayed with us out of the entire brotherhood.

So. Stay.

Adoptive parents, stay on the outside keeping watch while holding the lantern in hopes our eyes will catch a glimpse of the light you extend unwavering.

Significant Others, don your armor, lock onto our eyes, and tread into the minefields slowly and steadfastly.

Counselors and therapists, call out in the night with longitudes and latitudes that lead to safety.

Friends, lead the aerial combat and airlift in supplies in which we can rejuvenate.

Stay. Stay with us. Give us other hands to hold so we can let go.

Give us something good to compare.

Give us light.

Give us color.

So we can start to see what loss really is.

A ghost.

A hex.

A figment.

A Horcrux.

A shadow.

The remains.

Remains that may never decay.

But maybe we can let loss lie.