What is loss ?
How do we actually understand and rationalise it?
Especially in the 20s – it feels like we are loosing everything Opportunities, friendships, dreams?

In childhood loss felt different – too much, lingering and somehow distant.
Like you can never recover from this one moment of utter pain only to find it’s pieces, three months later, in a misplaced sock or a song.
I have cried my fair share over damaged goods, hopes and stories.

Which brings to attachment – the discernment that something is ‘mine’ and thus I may loose it.
I’ve always had a strong attachment to my belongings. As a teenager, I confused it with some version of materialism.
I often treat my space and things as extensions of myself—sometimes even more than my own body. My love for things has, at times, surpassed my attachment to people.

The older me is now realising both light and shadow.
As a child, it empowered me to find fulfilment in the mundane. More importantly, it let me build a distinct identity. A reflection absolutely and undeniably of my choosing. ‘Unbenounced’ to the world.
Objects are easy, words and actions not so much.
As an adult this means Growth on the inside.

I can debate on choices a lot here – but I’ll stick to the topic.
We literally DO choose what is worth feeling the loss of and to what degree.
So is suffering actually our choosing?

How do we then make sense of the death of a loved one?
Do we just stop caring after a point, or do we try to flip a switch and get numb? Is there really a “humanity switch”—and would you flip it if it meant you never had to feel the worst pain of your life?

Would it feel much different from emotionally numbing ourselves in cheap dopamine and complacency and addictions – a lot like where we are headed?

Does it mean we are loosing our freedoms to choose too?

Plath’s fig tree metaphor beautifully illustrates the pain of potential lost futures: each choice we make is also a choice to let go of countless other possibilities. This sense of loss is not just about what we have, but about what we imagine, desire, and ultimately must leave behind.

Acknowledgement:
Shilpa Sajan for a post on her page @lateafternoonthoughts.
Thank you for getting me out of 3 days of unfinished notes pages and reminding me of whats waiting on the other side of Anxiety.