Loss and Mourning

Do you ever get the feeling that your belongings are trying to escape? This happens to me all the time. My favorite earrings in the world made a break for it last week, but I caught them before they made it down the drain in the bathroom sink. Then, a few days ago, the very same earrings dislodged themselves between the car and the bedroom, but I realized it soon enough that I managed to find them on the stairs before they got eaten or vacuumed or anything. This morning, they finally succeeded: somewhere between the bathroom and the locker room at the gym, between 6 and 8am, they got away. They could be at home, but I doubt it. More likely is that they are in the intersection of Randolph and Snelling, being ground into the ice and asphalt, or under my seat on the bus where they'll fossilize into the under-seat-grime, or on the sidewalk by the gym where they will be swept away by the grounds people. I recognize that it's incredibly materialistic of me, but I'm sad about it. For one thing, this only happens to my FAVORITE earrings - these are the ones that always made me look nice and went with everything, that I got at the Indian market in Santa Fe in early 2006, which are obviously irreplaceable. For another, I'm already having an unbelievably stressful, difficult month, and this is just reinforces that sinking feeling that I have no control over anything whatsoever/the world is against me/I am a failure/my life is a tragicomedy/narcissism. I mean, how can I believe that I have anything valuable to say about post-structuralist cultural theory when I can't even accessorize? Really, half of getting through a hard time is not letting it show, and how am I supposed to keep my unaccessorized homeless wino look out of the classroom without these earrings? I don't wear makeup, so my colleagues will surely take my naked earlobes as a sign of imminent collapse.

I know, mountains, molehills, etc. Please cut me some slack.