Dear July, one // a knack for getting found.

Dear July,

Yesterday began with losing my favourite necklace and ended with me walking home in the pouring rain, in the dark, without an umbrella*. I crawled into bed, after blow-drying my hair, feeling shivery and quite worn out. Uncertainty. So much to do. Doubt, doubt, doubt in my ability to do any of it. And – that necklace. It was the smallest of things: a silver elephant pendant on a thin silver chain. But I liked it, and was sad to lose it.

What had happened was this:

Getting ready that morning had been a bit of a hurried affair. Due to staying up too late the night before, I'd kept snoozing my alarm which meant I only left myself twelve minutes to get ready before my bus. So I spent those twelve minutes knocking into things in my tiny room while my heart raced: smearing make-up into my face, rummaging under the bed for my shoes, dragging the straighteners through my tangled hair a few times, stuffing my laptop bag with books and papers and lunch, pulling my coat on and then: go! Out the door and up the street.

What I remember doing was putting the necklace into my coat pocket before I left with the plan of fastening it when I got on the bus.

But then I got on the bus, and it had disappeared. I spent about ten minutes of the journey taking everything out of my pockets – crumpled napkins, my house keys, kirby grips which kept scattering to the floor, odd bits of brown string, euros and nickels and dimes and pennies – and laying each item out on my lap, hoping the necklace would be among them. It wasn’t. I kept repeating the process. Taking everything out, laying it out on my lap, scanning over each object: the necklace was not there. It must have fallen out during the mad dash to the bus stop. My heart sank. I should have been more careful with it.

//

This isn’t the first time I’ve lost that necklace. In fact, it seems to have a particular knack for getting lost. It'll fall to the floor, or under my bed, or hide under books, and – because it’s so slight – it often won’t reappear for months. The last time I lost it was actually just a few weeks ago, when my brother and I were visiting our friends in Atlanta, Georgia. 

‘I know it’s in this room, somewhere,’ I said to Evan about two days into the holiday. I ran my hand over every surface in the room, but couldn’t see it. (It was so warm over there at the time that we were both wearing shorts and no-cardigans. The ceiling fan above us whooshed). ‘Seriously, it must be in this room somewhere. I was just wearing it yesterday.’

He shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’ Then said, ‘It’s strange, isn’t it? Knowing there actually is an elephant in the room...’

Almost two weeks passed – driving through the mountains, eating mustard on sandwiches, chatting till late at night, getting a little sunburnt on our shoulders, seeing a bear – till I found it again. It was the last day of our trip and I was stripping the bed. There it was, hiding under the sheets, the silver chain glinting in the light.

//

When I woke up this morning, the weariness hadn’t shifted. Rain was still hissing outside my bedroom window. I turned over to look at the clock then lay in the dull light for a while, breathing, trying to quiet the minor note of anxiety that has been creeping in, trying to shake myself awake: Time to get up. There is much to do. You can do it. Time to get on.

I went through to the kitchen to get some breakfast: clicking the kettle on, reaching up to the cupboard for Earl Grey teabags, moving around in bare feet. I was scooping half a mug of granola into my bowl when I stopped what I was doing and gasped*. 

There it was. A glint of silver. The elephant necklace was lying in a curl on the table by my bowl. I stood with my mouth open, not quite believing it. 

Just the smallest of things. And I don’t really know what happened – maybe I didn’t put it in my pocket yesterday morning like I’d thought. Maybe I’d left it there on the table while I was getting lunch out the fridge. But finding it there this morning felt like a small miracle. Like a cup of golden honey to my heart. Like a gift: everything that had seemed impossible just a few moments ago suddenly felt less so. Change is possible, writing is possible, feeling light and heat again is possible. I can do it. Time to get on.

//

Notes.)

*Some nicer things did happen in the middle of these unfortunate bookends. Like dinner with some of my closest friends, and talking on the phone to my parents, and writing some decent paragraphs...

*True story: I actually gasped.