Losing Yourself

Something out of the ordinary happened the other day - I lost something.

I never lose things. I am just not one of those people. I am organised. Boring. You can rely on me in a scrape - I will have that emergency tissue in my handbag; I've got the map to the hotel; yes, I've got some suncream you can borrow; yes, I have the last train time written down in my pocket notebook.

I do not lose things. Well...apart from the time I lost my passport. Life lessons learned: 1. Don't take your passport to a festival, even a non-camping one, and 2. Hairdressers are good people (one from the Regis salon in Debenhams found said passport and returned it to me. I went back there recently http://lookingwithmyeyes.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/hair-sex-death.html )

Ok, so I lost something once. Although, hang on...there was also that time I left an amazing paid of vintage driving gloves on the bus. I cried. Really (turns out there's a helpline you can ring).

Ok, so I am not quite as organised as I thought I was three paragraphs ago. But I'm pretty 'together' most of the time. So you can imagine my anger and disappointment when, on the last short hurdle of my commute home - the number 50 bus, I realised...I had gone and lost my house keys.

It's horrible that moment, isn't it - you must have felt it at some point? That sinking realisation that your treasured possession is not in your pocket, at the bottom of your handbag, on the floor. This is an organised person's worst nightmare - how could I be so careless, so unlike myself?

You see, I will freely admit that I am a control freak - I think all truly organised people are. We cannot escape from ourselves. Which is why I was so unhappy when, in that moment I knew my keys were gone, I surprised myself with how careless and unreliable I could actually be. The last thing I want is to be surprised with the hidden depths of my character -  I want to be in control of me.

But if we were to rewind to seven years ago, to when I lost the passport, it is a bit of a different story.

Of course, in that first moment of realisation there was the familiar panic / terror / rage-at-self for being so stupid. What if I had to leave the country? Or, more realistically, buy alcohol? But then once I knew my passport was safe in Debenhams, I let go a little and actually felt a bit pleased with myself. Proud, even.

Because when I was a teenager, being the organised one in my circle of friends always felt rather lack lustre, predictable. Dull. How I longed to be as carefree as they driving around late at night with boys they'd just met at MacDonalds, running off to the Welsh seaside on a whim, bunking off school, walking into an exam having done zero revision. It all came so naturally to them. It made them so appealing - sexy. There was nothing natural about me trying to climb onto a yacht late in the evening in Sandwell Valley Park, when I'd only (begrudgingly) agreed to go on a short walk.

And so as a young woman I found myself fighting against the organised streak in me, wishing I could be more like my more un-together, dishevelled friends.

But I've found that as you get older the tables turn. It's funny - people actually want to be like you. Those same free spirits want to know how you manage to get through life with few dramas and disasters. "I don't know how she does it." You feel brilliant (until you are inevitably asked to organise a hen do.)

You find your opinion changes, too. No long longer is the total disorganisation of your friends endearing or jealousy-inducing - it is f***ing annoying. Even they are annoyed by it, too.

This, reader, is a certain sign you have become a 'grown up'.

At the end of the day, that organised streak runs through you like a stick of rock. And if you break it, you breakdown. Having to sit outside your apartment building on a step like a cat, waiting for the other (responsible) key-holder to get home, is a low point in life.

It is no shameful thing to be the boring, organised one. But losing my keys has reminded me that I am indeed human, and still capable of surprising myself - even if I don't like it.

P.S. A few days later I found the keys - in my desk drawer at work. I think I can actually remember placing them in there...thinking I lost something else last week - the plot.