Guys, I’ve lost my sparkle. Gradually, day by day, month by month, so that I barely noticed it leaking away, leaving something foggy and thick. Suffocating.

I am pretty good at sniffing out a lie or maybe-not-the-whole-truth in other people. Not so much in myself. Because if I was honest or brave, I would say this part of me, this fog, has always been there, just easier to ignore and conveniently buried. Or maybe it’s not a fog but a piece missing, a hole where something was always supposed to be, a piece other people have.

If I was honest and brave, if I trusted people, I would say shiny also equals hard and brittle and protects the core of me. The part that can’t be risked.

Now that the shiny top layer is gone, this dull stuff is all that’s left to protect the heart of me. It covers me, a sticky film that takes the joy out of things that I used to find fun or creative or exciting. Sometimes I see a glimmer of how it used to be, like seeing myself through a translucent veil, one step removed.

I went to a concert this weekend, Glen Hansard. He put himself SO OUT THERE on stage. I don’t know what that’s like, never have. You could tell he felt things so deeply. You could tell even with the things that were sad that he owned those feelings. He was not afraid. I was so grateful and jealous.

Sometimes I think I am SO CLOSE, if I could reach a little further, I could grab that shiny bit of string and unravel it and wrap it all around me. I don’t know if this is a phase, a part of aging, or permanent. I don’t know how to find the map back to myself, the part that found joy and sadness and all the things in between.

So I put words out there and let things simmer and settle. Even writing the words here is a step removed. even knowing that people who know me will read them. I would never say these things out loud. That would make them real.

What if I can’t find the map. What if the missing bit is not fixable or findable. What if I used up all the shine and sparkle and this is all that’s left.