Loss and the Dealing With Thereof

I recently moved into my first apartment. Well, at least the first apartment I’ve had to pay electric and cable for, and clean for myself in, seeing as I did do a fair amount of cooking and whatnot when I lived in an apartment in Greece while I studied abroad in Athens. It’s felt like I’m taking my first steps into the “real world,” as young and naïve as that may sound, as I ordered the electric and cable, bought furnishings to fit out the apartment, paid bills, and even had a minor meltdown about possible bed bugs.

Though really this whole experience is like living on my own (with a roommate) on training wheels – my parents have struck a deal with me so that they’re really the ones paying the bills for now; at least through my undergrad they pay for my room and board. So in some ways apartment life feels like a continuation of dorm life, with stricter consequences for messing around.

Several of my friends are also new to living the apartment life, as neighbors, roommates, and the like. Recently one of them, Mike, managed to lose his keys not once, but twice in the past three days, whether because due to his own fault, accidental displacement by another, or sheer bad luck I cannot say. I’m pretty sure he hasn’t yet located them again from the second go-around. He’s dealing with this loss in a way I might myself deal with it—telling himself they aren’t lost yet and that they’ll turn up eventually, that everything will be just fine despite the fact that the situation seems a little out of his control, especially because he doesn’t appear to be doing anything to fix the problem.

But who would, considering that the what he’ll probably have to resort to is paying a hefty fine of around $75 to replace keys and lock, with the alternative—waiting and hoping they turn up, with an added dash of searching when not otherwise occupied—is so much easier. This loss has proved extremely frustrating, for my friend, as he feels somewhat helpless in his attempt to regain what is missing, what now seemingly resists being found. What course does he choose now? Should he continue the search, scouring his apartment in hopes of finally finding the lost item—all while putting the contents of his and his roommate’s apartment in some danger of being stolen from—or buckle down and pay the fee to get keys and lock replaced, with the accompanying paranoia of one day relocating the hunted object and feeling a damn fool.

The basic feelings that Mike’s been feeling lately should be well known to all who’ve had to cope with loss, whether it be big or small. Feelings of frustration, anxiety, worry, and thoughts of “How do I go about dealing with this?” assault the mind, in greater or smaller degrees depending on the loss. This particular example of losing one’s keys does pale in comparison to the feelings of loss that accompany death of one close to you, or losing a lover, even a friend to a fight. The point is that loss is a label that applies to everyone, one that we all can identify with, in greater or smaller amounts depending on what we’ve lost. What is crucial to focus on in the wake of such occurrences is how the person in question deals with loss, what reactions ensue, and what knowledge can be gained even in the face of a potentially horrific loss.

All of which may seem horribly off topic in an essay purporting to concern itself with “Modern Love.” Worry not; I’m getting there, though in a very indirect fashion. The two topics, love and loss, can be seen to go hand in hand, though this requires use of a somewhat morbid lens. As I see it, anyway, love tends to come with the inevitability of loss. A thought that’s been had countless times before, I’m sure, but one that is always strikingly depressing to me. A relationship, a friendship, even a bond with a pet may begin with an overflowing amount of goodwill, love, friendliness, or what have you, but things process unceasingly toward an end, however it may come. Significant others grow apart, friendships disintegrate due to neglect over time or implode in a fiery explosion of words, the pet (or owner, perhaps) dies. Marriage, the everlasting bond, you say? Till death do us part, I say. We all die in the end; mortal bonds are inevitably broken, whether they be your attachment to your keys as an essential part of daily life or the highest flowering of love you feel toward the person you’ve partnered with for life. College seems a particularly intense time for love—of all sorts, not merely romantic—to run high, and loss to occur to capitalize on these feelings. I’ve seen it happen to others around me, it’s happened to me, and I don’t expect it to stop any time soon, especially seeing as it’s happening to me, in the right here and now.

Last year, when I was a sophomore in college, I began getting into the processes of dating a freshman guy, after determining that my boyfriend of the year before and I were not, in fact, going to get back together as we had originally thought of doing, for reasons probably too complicated to go into here. I saw it as finally moving on from a guy I’d pined over all summer and part of fall to a potentially great new guy, as strange and contorted as this new relationship eventually grew to be. However, Guy Number One didn’t exactly see it that way. We were still very close, and shared a group of fairly tight-knit friends; as such, we saw each other nearly every day, and when he began to see Guy Number Two, who became integrated into our group and friends with Number One eventually, and I together, he ended up quite jealous. He wanted me back, but that wasn’t what I wanted.

To cut something of a long story shorter, we tried to remain friends, having made something of a promise the year before to attempt to do so in the potential face of breaking up. Over the course of months, we hung out with the same people, played the same games, ate in the same cafeteria together. But in the end it couldn’t work out that way for him. He confessed to still being in love with me on two occasions, and when all else failed, what he did turned out to be the real world version of “de-friending.” He completely cut me out of his life, the way a surgeon would excise a malignant, cancerous tumor. Like you’d cauterize a wound. Out of nowhere he simply stopped most forms of social interaction with me, avoiding me like I was the plague.

By the time I sat him down and talked to him about what was going on, I was hurting badly down inside. Why wouldn’t someone I considered my best friend at one point even look at me with a friendly face? Why had I lost him, and how could I get him back as a friend? Finding out the reasons why he no longer wanted to associate me didn’t help much at the time, either—he connected me too much with the person he had been freshman year, and that was a person he wanted to move away from being, plus this would further his attempt to move on after me.

Moving on I could understand well enough, but my feelings of rejection and loss were overwhelming. Why wasn’t I good enough? How could he remain friends with everyone else from last year, and not me, the person he’d been closest to? I didn’t know what to do other than fight, and fight I did, with tears and angry words. To no avail. Those keys were never found again, and there is no price to pay in order to replace what we once had. I’m happy he’s found happiness now, but his separation from me did much in wrenching parts of our group of friends apart, to the point where I don’t see several of them as often as I would like.

And examples could continue; a friend of mine, Jake, had a similar—but still more explosive—falling out with his former roommate for seemingly no other reason than that their personal habits and mannerisms grated on each other too much over the year while living in close proximity. Another friend of mine appears to be distancing himself from myself and my current boyfriend, possibly even our entire circle of friends from last year, for seemingly no reason at all, and I’m still not sure how to react to this. Do I try to talk to him, or simply give up caring about things and let him go his own way? Is lying down and accepting the loss, in hopes of maybe reconciling later, better than putting up a damaging fight that might leave lasting, incurable wounds on the relationship?

I still don’t know the answer to that question, and I’m not sure I will ever find the correct stance for dealing with loss of love, be it romantic or platonic. Does one react with passivity and tact, or come in guns blazing trying to figure out a solution to the problem? Adaptability to the situation is surely key, though that’s such a broad statement it likely does little to help anyone dealing with such problems. Merely going through life, which inevitably both gives us love and takes it away, which puts us through significant amounts of loss, does give one the experience to perhaps deal with loss better when it happens again. A rather pessimistic stance, but a pragmatic one. What conclusions we take away from loss are our own, and specific to scenario, but in so far that these experience help us to know ourselves and perhaps others more fully, they are to be valued.