I often get lost.
Mainly when I'm walking, or when I'm inside buildings and houses. Small,
large, you name it. See, when I visit a friend's house, when it's time
to leave, I might forget where the exit is. Usually, I try to see which
way someone is leaning so that I can follow the clue/hint toward
the exit hall or door. If they don't lean, I keep talking nonsense until
some person begins to walk a certain direction, giving me the
"go-ahead." Or I shuffle and watch how they act. Do they widen their
eyes, which means, Where are you going? Or do they just step forward, relaxed.
It's a maddening game.
I hate, hate to ask. That's what makes me panic -- not the lost part, but the fear that I may have to ask.
If
I enter a building from a different direction, I have trouble
understanding where the stairs are, and I always have difficulty finding
the right room. If I'm at a party and someone tells me where the
bathroom is, I may end up in the closet, or I may forget the way back. I
get distracted, or I notice a collection of dog figurines, or I see a
cool painting, or I stop to visit with the cat, dog, plant, hall mirror,
and bobble head collection. Any number of things can
take the "directions map" right out of my brain. So I listen for the
noise, the rumble of voices, to find the way back. That's usually the
ticket.
When I'm driving, I usually have a good sense,
unless I'm thinking about true love, and then I just might pass my exit
and end up taking the LONG WAY somewhere. But I always get where I need
to be, and truly, GPS comes in handy nowadays. Back in the day, it was
every man/woman for him/herself. Meaning, my road trips were often
exceptional.
When I was very little, I was spending the
night at a friend's house, and I got up to go to the bathroom in the
middle of the night, and I had no idea how to get back to her room, so I
just started wandering around the house. I guess I made some racket,
because the friend's mom finally found me in some corridor, and she
said, "What are you doing? Go back to bed." I remember thinking, Right, I'd really like to.
I just stared at her, not moving. Finally, my friend's mom shook her
head and took my hand, leading me back to the right room. Crawling in my
sleeping bag, I felt so defeated that I was "caught lost."
I distinctly remember how much I wanted to figure it all out on my own.
When
I was in high school, I was a brief member of the cross country team.
But one day, when we were supposed to run five miles, I got lost and
ended up running eight, and I was still going until I finally flagged
down some random car to take me back to school. That's right, a random
person. In the bathtub that night, I decided that eight miles and
directions were too much trouble, so I quit the team, but the real
reason I quit was this: the whole time I ran, I thought about the
horses I should be riding, and I wanted to focus on that sport, not the
running. So I did.
So I get lost when I'm anxious, bored, distracted by visuals, or when I want to be somewhere else or be with someone else. It's like my body is saying, No, you are not going the right way, and you are not in the right place, go over here. Or, it's this: you are not with the right person. Most
of the time, it's really this: I get lost because I'm attuned to the
scene around me, and I'm musing about something to write. I see the
pictures and stories in things.
I see the whole damn movie sometimes.
I
guess when I'm supposed to be paying attention to routes and maps, I
think about the sadness in someone's eyes, the unique shade of a woman's
hair, the man in the coveralls at the park, the glass earrings I just
bought, the brown-eyed boy I once met in Blacksburg, one of my old
professors, how I want some gum, my grocery list, the next step for book
four. At exit three, my exit, I might think this: I wonder how I'd look with a septum piercing and Mohawk. By
the time I'm at exit five, I've decided to do the piercing, but then I
think it might be better to put the money to tattoos. And then I realize
I'm too broke for bodily mutilation, damn.
Maybe
being lost isn't being lost at all. Maybe it's about becoming "found."
Through someone's help or a divine act of Providence, I always end up
where I need to be. Maybe not where I'm supposed to be, but I end up where I need to be. Maybe "winning" or being on the "right path" aren't all they're cracked up to be.
Maybe it's the ridiculous route of trying that matters.
C.A. MacConnell
