Getting Lost...or Found?

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 toward 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