Loss is a funny thing.

For starters, it’s an immensely individual experience. Six people can live through the same tragic event and come out with six mind-blowingly different experiences. Hell, there will be six different memories of said event. We might be able to relate to each other, using the event as common ground, reaching out and around each other, but sometimes, loss leaves us alone. Isolated. Even in a room full of people, you are simply tied to your experience, wondering if you will actually ever break away.

Losses can be big, small, in between. You may not even recognize what you’re experiencing as loss. Sometimes you only realize it’s a loss after the fact and after you’ve put some serious time and space between where you are and what happened.

I think we have this tendency to consider death as the only real loss in this life, but that’s just simply not the case. We experience varying degrees of loss on a daily basis, some leaving a bigger impact than others. Sometimes you don’t even realize the string of events that have led to this feeling of calamitous loss until you’re looking back down the road wondering how in the hell you got here in the first place.

These last five months have been a fucking roller coaster for me. Well, 2017 as a whole, let’s just say. Some great things, some really exciting things, some less great things, some terribly awful things. You know, a good mix. But it wasn’t until I really started looking at the last 10 weeks, really, that I’ve started to realize the amount of loss I’ve experienced in a relatively short amount of time.

Some things you just don’t see until you’re looking back.

And it’s not a fucking wonder that I’ve made a Kaley-shaped dent in my couch and have only ventured outside when I needed to. While some people turn to the world when they’re going through bouts of stress or emotional strain, I turn inward. I turn away from people, from the world, from just about everything. I eat my feelings, and that usually means beer and cheeseburgers sans vegetables, so all in all, a real great kick to my system. My brain gets so fucking loud that I lose myself in Netflix to disconnect and shut things off for awhile. But that lifestyle is habit forming. It becomes my go-to reaction, and it’s not necessarily a good thing. Well, not even necessarily. It’s not a good thing.

But the good news about smashing along rock bottom and exploding into several large pieces of myself is that I get the chance to put things back together. Maybe better this time. Maybe not. That’s the joy and curse of these opportunities, the unknowing. On more than one occasion in recent days, I’ve cried enough to leave myself with swollen eyelids and a constant burn around my irises. But I’m purging. I’m getting that toxic, negative load out of me. I’m fighting through the internal mayhem, setting fire to what needs to go down in flames.

But with that purge comes loss. Experiences, relationships, friendships, connections will all morph, change, alter. Sometimes they can make it through and grow with you, and sometimes they can’t. Sometimes they come back, and sometimes they don’t. I’ll tell you, though, it’s brutal when people come back, but they’re just not sure. (So, be sure, eh?)

There’s this quote I have that says, “we live life forward but understand it backward.” And I’m not sure that there’s anything more true. Moments or experiences act as triggers which tumble down entire shelves of memories, bringing things you’d tried your damnedest to forget into stark clarity, forcing you to confront some things that you thought you’d simply take to the grave.

Are we better for it, for having to face those things? I don’t know. I really don’t. From where I’m standing at this particular moment in time, I honestly wish my shelves were still intact, everything neatly packed away in their appropriate boxes. Leaving me to live my life in peace.

But is that truly peace, or is it just a false sense of security? I find myself trying to make that distinction, make that decision. Do I step outside of the rubble and step into the version of myself that has absorbed these losses, morphed into something better, maybe something stronger? Or do I patch things up? Duct tape a piece of soul here, super glue a crack of heart there. Neither seems particularly appealing.

Loss comes in all shapes and sizes, but usually the holes it leaves feel dark and heavy.

And all to familiar.

I’m scared I’ll never be the same if I step forward, out past this demolition scene. I’m scared of what kind of person I will be, that maybe I’ll lose or leave something behind that I’ll never be able to retrieve.

And maybe that’s the biggest act of bravery, those timid steps we take into the light, not knowing whether we will truly be better or worse for it. Not knowing what waits for us on the other side. Running the risk to achieve the great, right?

Only time will tell.