Lost

In my last post I talked about the frustration of a broken social contract, and it seemed to be a continued theme with other articles about the same thing. Many other people are lost in this world and many are worse off than me in many ways.

This past week we lost a great dog. Daisy was the center of our home life for years, we made decisions around her and structured our lives based on her needs. Even my morning routine had several stops along the way to take care of Daisy. Our evening routine typically consisted of “bedtime potty” and encouraging her to go, and if it was raining we had to decide who was going to let her out in the middle of the night. So we’ve lost many of our routines and are finding new ones.

My husband lost his job this week as well. While it does make things more financially difficult, it’s more about another routine broken, minutes and hours are lost in trying to find new routines. We’re looking to lose less money on things, cutting back on spending, making sure we stick to a budget. The loss of a job means more than just not going to work, it can mean a change in identity, the loss of knowing what each day will bring.

When you hike, or go into the woods, you’re told that if you get lost to stay where you are. You’re more likely to be found if you’re not moving. These past few days have felt like the world had stopped, kept going, and was spinning too quickly all at once. Everything happened at once, and while we dealt with it an hour at a time, it just seemed to crash down. It wasn’t possible to stay where we were. We had to leave the clinic, had to eventually go home, then had to deal with the life changes. We’re beginning to move on, to find our new routines, but sometimes it feels like I’m still lost in the woods.