Yesterday in my random song share I wrote a little about how I have dropped the burdens I have been carrying and the parts of me and my life that no longer suit me. Today I have been thinking about the things that I have lost, and how both of these things have worked together to fundamentally change me and my life.

There is a lot of overlap in the groups, cause and effect, consequences. 15 years ago I first disclosed the childhood sexual abuse I experienced by a family member. I held on to that secret for many reasons, stories I believed about the importance of family, constant reinforcement of the idea that family meant something, it meant taking care of each other, protection.

Of course I knew better, my reality was so very different, but I struggled for years trying to reconcile those things before I could accept the deception, the dysfunction, the false sense of obligation and to set boundaries around the time spent with them. It took 15 years to finally cut the cord in full after that first step, 35 years after the abuse occurred, and now I have no contact with any of my family. They are lost. Even though this was a choice to let go of the burden of trying to maintain those relationships, it is still a loss, a part of my life that has just fallen away.

Fallen away.

All day I was picturing myself just walking down the road that is my life, and as I walk, parts of me just fall away and drop to the ground, but I just keep going on without them.

In 2018 I was diagnosed with cancer and another big part of me fell away. Many parts actually. Obviously I lost time, nearly 17 months where I had to focus on my treatments, recovering from surgeries, and now because of the chemo induced neuropathy, my mobility and independence have joined the group of parts that are now scattered somewhere behind me on the road of my life.

Cancer also took my business as I was not able to continue to do the work I was doing. Fallen away.

Just days after my final abdominal surgery, we had the Covid pandemic and the shutdown. Any hope I had of trying to save my consulting business disappeared. Relationships that got interrupted during my treatments drifted even further, and fell away.

Twitter became a shithole and I lost one of the most significant sources of social interaction I had left. My corner of the world where I talked about music and made jokes and played hashtag wars fell away.

You see the pattern, it has continued. The last 15 years have represented a period of shedding, molting, discarding, dropping, and having things taken or torn from me.

Fallen away.

What I realized today however, is that very little, if anything, has taken the place of all of the parts that have fallen away. I am incomplete, and all the new parts I try to add just don’t seem to fit right.

I try to work, I send out resumes, advertise consulting services. No one will hire me.

I join groups, subreddits, music forums, bluesky, trying to develop even causual relationships with interesting people, to have interesting conversations. Nothing.

I signed up for a program to help develop my creativity, something else that seemed to fall away at some point. Everyone there is great, the program is great. The instructor is great. I just don’t feel like I belong there. I leave the calls feeling even more different and alone than when I joined.

I try to share stories about songs in an online community, desperate to be seen, to be recognized or acknowledged, to connect with someone. Anyone. To find my people. I don’t think they are there. I don’t think they are anywhere.

I write here, I redesign the site, I share songs – but no one reads.

I speak – but no one listens.

I shout – but no one hears

I am beginning to think that so much of me has fallen away, so much of who I was has been lost, that there is nothing really left of me.