Where something's lost, something new is found.

"Why are you writing on pieces of loose paper like that?" - good question I wonder to myself as I find a way to brush off his annoyingly and rightfully inquisitive observation.

"This diary has pretty paper. I like to write it messy first and once I'm happy with it, I can re-write it here. On this pretty paper." I'm not sure my answer was entirely convincing although it's not as though the question was relevant enough for him to fly into a raging debate over either. However, it turns out my uncontrollable need to maintain handwriting perfection holds potential for absolute annihilation resulting in complete self destruction and discombobulation.  Meaning - loose paper gets lost. More easily than one would imagine and this in my world, is cause for much agony.

A few days later, at home, back from the most heavenly trip of my entire life time and I'm suddenly faced with the realization that the pages and pages of heartfelt - albeit horribly scribbled - words looped together in a script to describe my life and the feelings circulating within my being are gone. Gone. G-o-n-e. Not the kind of gone where one is hurled momentarily into a rage of misjudged panic only to find minutes later that what was "gone" was in fact just "hiding" in the outside pocket of their bag where they had five minutes earlier looked, and clearly overseen. No no. The kind of "gone" where one has searched insides AND outsides of bags, the bags inside the bags and even inside pockets of the tightest jeans that clearly would never fit wads of A4 sized paper, hoping to stumble upon a miracle or the proof that they do really happen. The kind of gone where after an hour of searching and false hope you are forced to sit quietly on the end of your bed, head in hands and whisper to no one in particular "no.. no - this isn't happening to me... no".

Yes it is. And it's gone. There's a reason you can never write something out twice, no matter how great your memory is. It'll always be slightly different, either in tone, or description or lack of connection with the moment.

I don't remember everything I was trying to say in those pages and pages of dribbled handwriting that never made it to the nice paper that is bound inside the beautiful leather journal my brother gave me. Nor do I remember how I felt while writing all I lost.  Who knows if I'll ever venture inside myself enough again to fathom even an attempt at reproducing what in this moment I grieve or if I'll simply let it fly into the abyss along with so many other things I am and have been mourning as of late.

I didn't come back from Mexico with the words I left New York City feeling. Though maybe that represents the ideas I returned home holding onto. When something is lost, there seems to be the potential for something new to be found.

And maybe it was.