Editor's Note: Love Notes columnist Stephanie K. Hopkins is away this week. While she's catching her breath, we can catch up with one of her award-winning pieces, this meditation on losing for which she won a CT Press Club Award earlier this year.
By Stephanie K. Hopkins
No matter how many times I read Elizabeth Bishop’s poem, “One Art,” I just can’t master the art of losing. I do what she says—I lose something every day, sometimes many things.
I lose my keys, my phone, my shoes, the one glove, that new aubergine scarf. I lose fresh strawberries to the untended fridge, mail to the growing paper pile, bills to my convenient amnesia. I lose time; I lose patience; and occasionally I lose faith. I lose money; I lose my appetite; and sometimes I lose my moral ground. I lose arguments; I lose words; I lose family, friends, and lovers.
And still, the art is lost to me.
I am the amateur loser, the who one never gets beyond her starting point no matter how hard she tries to lose.
But if holding on was an art, I would be an artistic genius. I remember everything lost. Though I can’t remember where I put the paring knife, I remember its particular weight in my hands and the fineness of its blade. I may have lost the scarf forever, but close my eyes, and there is its soft hold around my neck.
I remember each time I lost words and what made me lose them. I remember everyone I’ve ever lost in such detail and with such longing that sometimes I think I didn’t lose them at all.
I know that sometimes loving someone means letting them go. I know that it’s the bigger love that frees them, and it’s the smaller love that tries to guilt or bribe or convince them to stay.
And yet… and yet…
How do we know when it’s time to let someone go and when it’s time to fight for them?
When everything looks like something to hold onto, it’s hard not to reach and reach.
This piece was originally published May 26, 2012.
Award-winning columnist Stephanie K. Hopkins also writes short stories, non-fiction, and young adult fiction. She recently finished a young adult novel, "Edge of Seventeen," and is working on a memoir about her adventures as an ex-professor turned bartender. You can reach her at stephaniehop-at-gmail.com, follow her on Twitter @stephaniehop1, or find her on Facebook.