The Art Of Losing Yourself (And Finding Yourself Again)

I am the world champion of losing myself. I have trophies: dead vapes and dirty clothes, books I mean to read and cameras I go months without picking up. 

Like all Romantics, I have lost myself to men. In middle school I worried too much about the popular track star, and in high school I shape-shifted to attract hockey players, gym rats, and once even a newly hired member of the local police department.

I’ve lost myself to friends with closed minds who look at me funny for talking about the book I’m reading or the new band I like. I’ve lost myself to bosses who keep me up at night, tossing and turning over one beer spilt or one shot over-poured.

I know by now what losing myself looks like, and it’s often hard to spot until it’s too late. First come the changes on the outside. I wear gym clothes out in public and don’t do my hair. The glint in my eyes is replaced with bags under them, and I do things like commit the cardinal sin of asking the group chat what they’re wearing before I choose my outfit for the party.

The changes inside follow shortly after. A general lack of excitement for things that usually get me off: passing a smiling dog in the street or a baby in a stroller, Led Zeppelin on the radio, when the bartender gives me lots of lime.

The light inside of me shrinks and I realize that darkness isn’t empty at all; it takes up a lot of space.

I get tired and anxious and I second-guess every conversation. I sit by the phone and wait for a reply, and I wake up in the morning craving a joint to just turn my brain off. But right now, I am in Australia and there’s no weed in this godforsaken country so I wake up and I want to drink. But that’s what alcoholics do. So, I just vape while I pee and then splash cold water on my face. I’d never drink the water, just coffee and wine and Diet Coke; all I eat when I lose sight of myself are eggs, chocolate chips, and at restaurants.

I go to the gym and instead of finding clarity and confidence I let the mirrors and lights bully me and I pick out cellulite on my legs and softness in my waist where abs used to be.

If you see me on the Stairmaster, for the love of God, call my mom and tell her I’m not okay. I have never once in my life been sane and thought, Ah, yes what a lovely day to honor my body by climbing an endless staircase to nowhere while the saddest music I know plays through my headphones.

Don’t get me started on the music. I listen to songs with titles like Say You Love Me and I Can Love You Better and lyrics like “I want to drown in rot gut whiskey” just “speak to me.” ‘Desperate and melancholic’ are how I would describe my playlists when things get tough.

But God, I am nothing if not the master at finding the needle in the haystack, finding myself again. I have been beaten down to my knees and throughout my life I have wanted to hurt myself and end myself, stuff myself full of drugs and booze, call my mom, ignore my friends, throw my phone off a cliff, and flee the country.

I’ve been someone who habitually smokes seven grams of weed a day and says they don’t have a problem. More than once I’ve actually had the balls to run away from home and the gall to snap at my parents and cashiers. Harder than the drinking or the drugs or the temper is the picking yourself up.

This last time I got lost was because I got carried away. By a boy, for sure, because that’s what I do, but also by being broke and homeless and across the world and becoming all of those things in the matter of approximately 27 days. I had to get everything I wanted: a job at a beach-bar and a home in a beach-town and sex from the boy from the Beaches to realize that none of that will fix it.

The only thing that fixes it is remembering the version of yourself you’re the proudest of, the one you like to be and the one you like to think you are, and then figuring out what she would do. The hard part is the actually doing it, to turn off the lights at the perpetual pity-party and remember that you don’t let people talk to you that way or treat you that way or even kiss you that way.

And then you come back. The dead vapes are still in the garbage but the memory card on the camera starts filling up and the clothes are dirty because you wore them to the bar and not because you’re lazy. There is power to be found in not recognizing yourself in the mirror, but only if you know to remember which version of you should be looking back at you.

I don’t know what I want but I at least know who I am. I did not spend all those hours alone on planes and trains and buses and in Ubers, alone at dinner, getting coffee, and in museums, walking through parks in foreign cities and dancing to songs I don’t know in bars I’d never heard of, to not know myself.

What I am is too loud in public. You can nearly always see my nipples, and I can quote Foucault but cannot do long division. I bake people cakes for their birthdays and set high expectations for my own, even though I’ve been disappointed every year. I do gross things like shower in hostels barefoot and wear dirty socks because the broken washing machine isn’t my hill to die on.

My friend Molly tells me she’s scared of being too much or apologizes for playing Harry Styles, and I want to grab her by the shoulders and shake her and tell her that she should be as loud as she wants and she should buy a JBL speaker and play Harry Styles as loud as it goes for even a minute. The ones who would dwell on it are exactly the ones who disorient you, who fuck up your compass and lead you away from who you actually are.

I tell white lies about my age or occupation or how much school I’ve completed, and I read romance books or political nonfiction and rarely anything in between. I hang out with people who talk nice about their friends behind their backs and that is the bare minimum. I know how to line dance, but I can’t do things like tell my right from my left or drink red wine without staining my shirt, and I don’t think that these things make me dumb. I think that anyone who thinks I’m dumber for walking into tables or giving poor directions is simply worried about the wrong things, another litmus test.

I remembered who I was and now instead of sitting by the phone I just call without worrying if they want to hear from me because either way I have something to say. My naïve optimism means I think I’ll do things in my life like ‘get a job in my field’ or ‘hike the Inca Trail’ or ‘run a marathon’ despite the lack of data pointing to the manifestation of these events. People will tell you that those things are hard, but the ones you keep around know that hard things don’t scare you, and most importantly of all they inspire you by doing hard things themselves.

I have met a million versions of myself, and the best part of being alive is deciding which one you are, really. You’re the only one who’s gotten to meet the million versions of you, so aren’t you the only one entitled to know which one felt the most authentic?

I am not the one who begs a man who slaps her in the face to love her, nor am I the girl who sits on the picnic table at the beach and begs someone to be honest with her. The one who wears blouses to meetings only to keep her mouth shut because he doesn’t like it when you’re loud isn’t me either, and she sure as hell isn’t the one who considered joining a sorority for a hot minute there. 

I have been the girl that the bassist picks out in the crowd, and then who gives him her number but doesn’t answer the text. She’s the one that boys would fly across the country for, the one girls compliment in the bathroom, the one who makes friends when she goes out for coffee.

I’ve smoked weed with Mexicans crossed-legged in a hostel shower in London, made my friends pull over so I could steal road signs, and I’ve been the manager of a literal speakeasy during COVID-prohibition. I have been other versions of myself too, but why not try and bat a thousand and always be the one I like to be? If I just wake up and do what she would do every day, then am I not her every day?

Every time I lose myself, I find her again, and when I meet her, I’m reminded why it’s so good to feel like yourself all the way through your body, from the shoes on your feet to the words coming out of your mouth. And I look forward to the next time I pick myself up off the ground, because every time I meet her she comes back a little more assured, having learned a dozen lessons that change how she walks through the world or the ex’s birthday party.