🧥 When You Lose Something

I recently lost some of my favorite clothes. Not the kind of loss like, “I misplaced my sock.” My favorite stuff is gone, vanished, disappeared. It was a full garment bag with outfits I had carefully chosen for a few days away. It was exactly everything I needed and all the looks I had carefully thought through.

Somewhere between one stop and the next it disappeared. I still don’t know how.

Did it fall out of the trunk? Did I never put it in? Did someone take it? I retraced every step, called every place we’d been several times, hoping someone had turned it in. But nope, nothing.

Of course, I did what I always do. I called on St. Anthony.
Dear Saint Anthony, please come around, something’s been lost and it can’t be found.

That prayer has worked for me so many times it almost feels like a party trick, with things turning up in ways that made no sense. But not this time.

That’s the thing about losing something. You don’t just lose the thing, you lose the story and everything around it. You’re left wondering what happened, where is it, who has it now. 

Things don’t just disappear. I know someone is wearing my favorite Citizens of Humanity jeans right now. The style they don’t even make anymore. Perfect. Broken in just right. Someone is out there in my brand-new carpenter pants that I definitely paid too much for. And I’m pretty sure someone is very comfortable in my Rag & Bone denim jacket.

I still think about a Chanel jacket I lost years ago. Lost or stolen I’ll never know. But I think about it.

Why do we get so attached to things?

I know, I know. It’s just stuff. You can’t take it with you. I agree in theory, but I still hate it. My things, especially these things, don’t just sit in my closet. They’ve become part of how I move through the world and, dammit, they feel like me. So yeah, I miss my clothes.

I know I sound a little obsessive, but excuse me, I am. And where are you, St. Anthony?

Maybe it’s time to look at this in a different way. Sometimes things don’t just disappear, they just move on. It’s up to us to decide if we’re going to stay stuck looking for them.