Saturday, February 3, 2018

Losing It

So, I'm kinda a controlled person. Like, when I left home, I took my things with me. I didn't have that much, but what I had, I took. I didn't see why not. 

Somewhere between my 3rd year of college and getting married, I lost my baby blanket. Yes, I had my baby blanket in college. It was mine, after all. It was a harmless thing that I kept inside my pillowcase. Well, either way, it vanished. I don't know. I had a couple of moves that last year before getting married. One was a house in the town I went to community college, and the stupid kid who was taking care of the place for his dad while it was supposed to be for sale, well he got some kind of ego trip and threw all my stuff into the garage and LOCKED IT. Boy did we rip him a new one when we (my bf/future husband and his parents) came down to get it out of the garage where he had basically tossed it like a teenage boy and locked it. Froze my contacts (fine, I hated them anyway... but its the principle of the thing). He didn't box it up and put it there, he hauled it down armload by armload and tossed it there. I was late paying but it wasn't as if I hadn't been communicating with him. He definitely should have said something BEFORE moving my stuff, I would have come and moved it my freaking self.

After that I lived with some mutual friends of my husband for a while. It was complicated and confusing and I was overwhelmed with wedding and couldn't really hold my end of the babysitting bargain a few times, but they were (and are) really good friends, despite not seeing them much anymore. I really appreciate what they did for me.

I don't know where in this mess my blanket went missing. I don't remember. But I'm heartbroken as I've looked for it for 12 years and not been able to find it. 

When my brother was a baby, he had this adorable outfit. It was red and blue and it was overalls with a coat and my mom took the most adorable pictures of us out back by a beautiful maple tree in the fall. When my oldest was a baby, I had the outfit and we did pictures also, even by the same maple tree! We even did pictures with Bonnie, despite the tree dying and most of it fallen over, with my 2nd. After that, I thought maybe my sister wanted to put it on her kids for some neat pictures, and I thought I was done having kids. Well, I wasn't and I asked several times for the outfit back. She is NOWHERE NEAR as obsessive compulsive as I am. They were apparently done having kids and started to give things away... and I don't know how, and I don't know when and I don't know where, but the outfit is gone. I literally looked in every box in her garage. It's gone. Not only would I have loved to also have my 3rd in the outfit, but the long term intention was for my brother to have it for his kid someday. And now, it's gone.

And I'm, again, heartbroken.

Just recently, we noticed that there were 6 covers missing for our throw away tupperware. AND one of the cups from the kids' car seats its gone (and has been for a long time). NEITHER are a big deal, really. We use the cups in the car for the two little ones to have a snack, but I don't know where the 2nd one disappeared to. And it's not like I haul food around the world or something, I don't even put them in the dishwasher because it's just not worth taking up the space, and I have things to hand wash anyway. So it goes from the cupboard, to the counter to the fridge, to the sink.... WHERE could they POSSIBLY have gone?!?

Again, these last two things are not important. They are just the "straw that broke the camels back". And every time something mysteriously disappears, I'm mystified and reminded over and over about the things that actually matter to me that have disappeared. How heartbroken I am over my baby blanket and our "family heirloom" of an outfit. And how angry I am that things disappear when I let my guard down for a moment or time period because I want to be nice, or share, or trust someone. And it only proves the one thing I'm the most scared of as an aspie: trusting someone. 

I think it seems like it's common for people with aspergers to be controlling of things, situations, conversations, play... because if we aren't in control, we have to give up trust to someone else, and that someone else might not live up to that preplanned social thing we have written in our mind to help us ease the anxiety in our minds over how something is going to go. 

And when somehow that trust gets broken, it only proves to us that we were stupid to trust them, stupid to share, stupid to let go of something that mattered. I feel stupid, disappointed, frustrated, and heartbroken that I trusted and then ended up losing something that mattered to me. 

I don't see myself as a materialistic person. I don't have a house full of things that I can't live without. But I am a nostalgic person. And there are things I have that I think of as bigger than they are because they are a part of who I used to be. Like notebooks full of diary pages. My intention is to take pictures of each page and digitalize them, especially since we found them after years of them being in the "loft" of the garage... and bugs and slight mildew got to them. Then I got pregnant, had my 2nd, followed by my 3rd just when I thought I had it together enough to start doing things again... and I'm hoping that eventually I'll get to it again. 

Does anyone else feel this way? Is there something YOU perseverate over that you've lost? Do you feel like you lose your mind when something disappears, whether its socks or tupperware lids? Is this crazy? How do I heal my broken heart over the few things that really mattered to me? Why doesn't God help me find them or prevent them from being lost, knowing it matters? Is this some way of making me not attach to things (even though I feel like I am a bit MORE neurotic about things now because I've already lost things)? 

I don't know. I just had to get this off my chest.