In my lifetime, I've lost many things and unfortunately, many things have also been stolen. There is a difference, you know, between losing something and something being stolen. The important thing to realize and the point of this post is that only objects can be both lost or stolen. Human beings can only be lost.
You may wonder why I'm writing about this. First of all, this, or something just like it, makes regular rounds on Facebook.
In the comment section, I posted this:
If you think that another human being is an object that can be stolen like a TV or a computer, then that's part of the problem. If he cheats on you/leaves you, either he's shit or you're shit. If he's shit, good. Glad to be rid of him. If you're shit, I guess you better change your ways. Let's stop vilifying the other woman and see things for how they are.Some people are bad, men and women. Some people are good, men and women. It's best to let the assholes go and focus on being the best WE can be and not worry about anything else.
I guess that doesn't sound like my usual, thoughtful self, but it does sound like my fast response self.
In this forum, however, I'll begin with a few reminiscences.
When I was a child, I always carried a pocketbook (purse, bag, handbag). I began this habit, as best I remember, when I was in third grade. My first freak out over thinking I had lost something involved, you guessed it, a pocketbook. I thought I had left it at a pizza place where we stopped on the way home from my Grandparent's during Christmas...it had $5 in it too - I was a wreck. We quickly turned around and I got my purse...and my $5...I was fine.
The next trauma occurred not long after that, or before, not sure, although it didn't involve my pocketbook, but my favorite stuffed animals. I had left them in our broken down car - a broken axle coming home from Grandma's house, again. My father and brother enjoyed tormenting me by ensuring me that they would be gone by the time we retrieved the car the next day. I was crying so hard I couldn't breathe. Harmless play. Sure. But I digress. The next afternoon, the stuffed animals were there and I was thankful. And I also swore that I would NEVER go ANYWHERE with only my father and brother...again.
The most heart wrenching loss occurred in 1987. I lost everything I owned - Evan Picone shoe collection, amazing wardrobe (including a black wool cape I had worn in France and a full-length gray wool overcoat suitable for Downing Street), the little bit of jewelry I had left, and the most important to me, my collection of stuffed animals. It was not huge, but it was my monkey collection. I had a large orangutan my uncle had given me many years earlier, a chimpanzee baby with pacifier and a gorilla with beans in its paws to make them heavy and cool. There were a few more, but I can only remember those 3. I cried over them for years. Anytime I thought of them, I'd get depressed. Why did I lose them? I was evicted and thought I'd be able to return for them in the allotted time. I had no car. I never got back.
Sometimes loss is confused with stolen, but there's quite a difference. When things are stolen, more is gone than the object itself; when an object is stolen, trust is loss. Trust in your own ability to be responsible, trust that the world really isn't a bad place, and even trust in the people who you thought were friends. It's a nasty feeling.
The first act of thievery I experienced happened in when I was in middle school. Three "friends" I had invited over raided my mom's pocketbook, stole $14 and 3 rings from my jewelry box; gifts from my two grandmothers - all while I was in the kitchen making drinks for us in the heavy glasses with lettuce leaf relief. I got one of the rings back at school. Just took it off the finger of someone who swore it was her mother's. The other 2 rings and my childish trust? Gone.
As the years passed, more things were stolen, mostly due to my negligence; forgetting to lock my car, trusting the wrong person or people, not locking the adjoining door in my college suite because I thought my suite mate was my "friend", etc. With each stolen item, ring, book, piece of clothing, I vowed to be more careful, but what actually happened, I think in looking back, is that I was on my way to achieving a state of detachment - Buddhists believe it to be a necessity for happiness...
I'll never know whether my class ring, my diamond necklace and my family crest ring were lost or stolen. I believe both, but also sold. That's a story too long to tell here and there was much more lost than that jewelry, specifically trust.
I've lost more and more has been stolen than I have time or need to share, but I wanted to share these few stories because these are the losses that hit the hardest.
My point is very simply that objects can be stolen. Objects can be lost. Objects are just that. Objects.
Now back to the Facebook posting.
A human being can not be stolen like a pocketbook, ring or computer. If someone can be stolen, then they are considered to be nothing more than property. And are human beings property? Objects? No, they are not.
A human being can be LOST...maybe due to negligence, abuse, no communication, lack of respect or appreciation, the time is up, but stolen? No.
In closing, I just want to say that I don't like to hear about "people being stolen". Stolen jewelry, computers and clothes can't realize that they're not home anymore and return. Losing someone to someone else doesn't mean they've been stolen. They've been lost.
There are many things one can do when someone is lost. Blame someone else, blame yourself or the other, or blame anything....just BLAME. And be a victim while you're at it. The more pitiful the better.
I prefer to consider this option, however. When on the receiving end of a lost relationship, these two outlooks can make all the difference in moving forward healthily.
If there's a history of cheating, thank God that a lying, no-good-dog is out of your life and can bother someone else to death. If it's a good person you wish you still had, accept the fact that you didn't take care of a precious gift and you lost it. Before either of these will work, though, you have to understand that human beings are not objects that can be stolen. If a person is unwilling to grasp that simple concept, then perhaps there may be a great deal of loss in the future.
