On losing it.

I couldn’t find my key this morning.  

I put it on a chain around my neck when I went for a run last night, and would have used it to come in from my run and lock the door behind me, so I knew it had to be somewhere in the house.  I went directly into the shower after my (extremely sweaty) run, and I would have had the key in my hand from locking the door after coming in.  I always leave my keys in the same place, so when I went to grab them to head to work this morning, I found my car keys right next to my sunglasses I was also wearing while running, but the key on the chain I wore around my neck? Not there. 

I must have set it somewhere else in my post-run deliriously hot and sweaty state.  I scoured, I pulled my bed apart, I looked under everything and in every nook and cranny it could have ended up. No luck.  Our housekeeper came today, so I told her on my way out to keep an eye out for a key on a chain and assumed she would find it during the day as she’s a really thorough cleaner. 

Nope.  

After a long day and a long week, to come home to a missing key (we had an extra so I could still get in)… well. Let’s just say, it wasn’t pretty.  People tell me all the time how brave and strong I am, and this story is for them. I fell apart. 

I started pulling the place to pieces, retracing my steps again and again and yet again, thinking I must have missed it the first dozen times I looked.  I looked under everything and around everything and even pulled up the mattress in case it slipped down in between it and the bed frame. As I’m doing this I’m getting more and more upset; the tears start to burn in the backs of my eyeballs as my jaw clenches and my inner self-talk goes from it must be here somewhere to what is wrong with you to you are a complete and utter disaster, an embarrassment to the human race, you can’t even hold on to your keys, and you think you’re going to have some noble role in transforming a nation? What a joke! You’re a fraud and an idiot and a poor excuse for a friend/roommate/international worker/humanitarian/human. 

Over a misplaced key. 

Honestly. 

Then I sat on my bed and cried.  It was no longer about the key, but missing home, and friends, and hugs, and familiarity, and comfort.  It was about suddenly feeling the weight of responsibility and big decisions and frustrations, of feeling incompetent and needing to ask a million and a half questions every single day, of not sleeping well and feeling hot all the time and all the other stressors and pressures building up over the last few weeks… within the disorientation of losing something that’s pretty important, that I’ve never lost before in my life, and apparently highlights my overwhelming ineptitude in regards anything meaningful and worth doing.  

Well, thankfully, this is not my first rodeo and I could see that my reaction was far, far, far out of proportion to the triggering event. I could see there’s something bigger here, deeper, more fundamental to my identity that was at stake, so I stopped. Just stopped.  Stopped thinking, looking, crying, panicking, and felt the weight of the accusations against my identity and calling… and said no.  

I will not let you talk to her like that. 

Someone said to me one time something that has been incredibly important through the years of this journey: if you talked to your friends the way you talk to yourself, you wouldn’t have any friends. 

And sometimes I have to remove myself from myself to see it… putting my hand up to silence the mean part of me, the one that wants to tear down and defeat and destroy.  I will not let you talk to her like that.  What would I say if it was a friend having this meltdown in front of me? It’s a key.  It’s easily replaced. You are not a failure as a human or a roommate or any of that other garbage.  You’re human. And logically, it has to be here somewhere, because you’re not locked out on your run.  You can handle moving across the world and meeting presidents and prime ministers and speaking to thousands and a million other awesome things… how does losing a key destroy all of that? It doesn’t.  It doesn’t. 

And with that little pep talk to myself and a quick chat with a friend, suddenly the whirling stopped and the seas calmed and all was well and peaceful again.   

And a few minutes later, I found the missing key. 

And I’ve decided to share this for one major reason: ten years ago, this might have taken me out for a week.  I would not have stopped the self-hatred and destruction, and there would have been hours of tears, not the minute or two there were today.  I know I’m not alone in the familiarity with the shame spiral; in fact, I don’t know any woman with whom I’ve had a close relationship that couldn’t relate in some way or another to this story and the feelings within.   

The line, I will not let you talk to her that way has been critical in my personal growth and freedom from the shame spirals.  The whole thing this afternoon lasted less than ten minutes; in the past it would have been much longer, and maybe someday it won’t happen at all.  But the darkness does not win today, not even close… and once again I’m grateful I can feel because it means I am alive.  

This isn't the key I lost, but one I keep close to remind me of who I am.