NOTHING LOST

IS EVER REALLY

Iknew I would lose my engagement ring, and I did. I took it off at the gym, threw it into the front pocket of my rucksack where I keep my keys and small change, and forgot about it. I pulled out my keys to unlock my bike at the train station, and I’m guessing it’s there that the symbol of my eternal love for my fiancée found itself a new home – in the gutter, or perhaps on the finger of some lucky passerby. Or yes, maybe a fox ate it, or a pigeon, or perhaps the man who plays the accordion outside the tube proposed to his girlfriend with it. Whatever, it’s gone; don’t rub it in.

The average person loses roughly 200,000 items in their lifetime, misplaces up to nine items and spends an average of 15 minutes searching for keys, paperwork or their mobile phone a day, according to a study of 3,000 people in the UK*. It’s reassuring to know that I’m not alone in losing things, but the difference with me is that I never find them.

Ever since I was a child, I’ve had a preternatural ability to lose items that are precious to me. My school years were punctuated by major disappearances: my clarinet, my prized Carhartt hoodie, a year’s worth of science coursework, my GCSE textiles final piece (it was a scrappy patchwork quilt, if anyone’s seen it?).

Most of the time, I can conjure up some kind of pseudo-moral reason for why I lost the thing in the first place. In the case of my most recent indiscretion, I decided there was an important lesson to be learned. My fiancée and I had agreed not to give each other engagement rings – we didn’t need jewellery

THE DAY SHE MISPLACED HER ENGAGEMENT RING, LOTTE JEFFS REALISED THAT HER LIFE-LONG HABIT OF LOSING THINGS HAD A DEEPER MEANING THAN MERE CARELESSNESS. SHE THINKS BACK THROUGH ALL THE THINGS SHE’S LOVED AND LOST, AND DISCOVERS THE ART LETTING GO

to prove our commitment to getting married, and we decided to save the money for the wedding bands. Then one lunchtime, as I was browsing in Liberty, I stumbled across a nice, simple, rose-gold, diamante-encrusted ring. ‘I’ll just buy it for myself and we can call it my engagement ring,’ I thought. It turned out that whatever higher power is looking out for me in such matters had other ideas, and lo, the ring vanished from my possession via a series of bad decisions and general carelessness to prove that I should never have bought myself an engagement ring (what was I thinking!) or have gone against the decision we had made as a couple. It was an expensive ‘learning moment’ for sure, but the moral narrative made it easier to get over. Plus, I’d only had it two weeks – not long enough to develop what psychologists call the ‘attachment’ to an object that entangles it with your sense of self, which makes losing it more of a crisis.

My fiancée very sweetly offered to buy me back the same ring. But trying it on again in the shop, it didn’t feel right. I didn’t want it back. I had let it go, and along with it I’d let go of that rash, independent aspect to my personality that lead me to buy the ring in the first place.

Something similar happened a few months ago when I left my gym kit on the tube: box-fresh Nikes, an Ivy Park tracksuit, and an LA Lakers baseball cap. When I got a call from Transport for London (TfL) the following week to tell me the kit had been found and was residing in the annals of the Baker Street Lost Property Office, I couldn’t bring myself to pick it up. I was over it. I wasn’t the person with the Ivy Park tracksuit any more – I’d moved on.

I lose things so frequently that I have consolidated the seven stages of grief into three. First is the sinking recognition that said item is no longer with me. Then there’s the head-in-hands annoyance with myself, the frantic retracing of steps and rummaging through bags. And finally comes a calm acceptance that it doesn’t really matter, it is just ‘stuff ’ after all, and I figure I must have lost it for a reason, even if that reason is to learn how to take better care of my belongings from now on.

In the last year, TfL has processed 43,068 lost bags**. Only 17,323 of these bags were ever picked up – that’s 59.7% of people who probably feel as ambivalent as me about the things we leave behind.

My annual travel card, an Issey Miyake paper fan, my work pass (twice), my debit card, two pairs of earrings and my favourite fountain pen are just some of the things that have fallen through the cracks of my ownership in the past few months. The reason, on the whole, that this happens is that I am never entirely focused. My mind is always multitasking; at any given moment I’m thinking about work, family, what to have for dinner, wedding plans – all while reading emails and scanning Instagram.

It’s not that I don’t care about my things,

I’m just more tuned into my internal world than my external, material possessions.

What is hard to reconcile is that I am so organised in every other aspect of my life. My home and work desks are always tidy, I never miss a deadline or forget important information, yet when it comes to keeping hold of stuff I’m an absolute scatterbrain. Some argue that being ‘a loser’ is a genetic disposition. In a study published in the journal Neuroscience Letters, researchers found that the majority of people surveyed about forgetfulness and distraction had a variation in the dopamine D2 receptor gene (DRD2), which makes them more prone to losing things***. My mum, it must be said, is a bigger disaster than me in this area and we’ve spent much time together returning to cafes, parks and galleries on the hunt for her missing spectacles. So, yes, I do think my genes are partly to blame.

In Psychopathology Of Everyday Life, Sigmund Freud argued that, ‘We never lose what we really want.’ But then Freud probably never left a Helmut Lang blazer in a bar in Soho. However, when I consider that I have not once lost my passport – and, given my track record, this is significant

– I think I understand what he means. My passport isn’t just an object, it represents my ability to explore the world and enrich my life with experiences. It is the item in my possession that I am most careful with because losing it would matter hugely.

I’m hoping the same logic will apply to my wedding band when I get it. The gold ring will signify something far more valuable than the object itself. It is meaning that we really want to hold on to.

Nothing puts this into sharper focus than losing a person that you love. The loss of material possessions pales in comparison. My cousin Billie, who was like a sister to me, died of a brain tumour at the age of 31. Three weeks after her death, I left my partner of 10 years. I walked out of the house we owned together one night with just my passport, wallet and a change of clothes. If life went on without Billie, it would sure as hell go on without my Nespresso machine and all the other

‘stuff ’ I had come to rely on.

Being a habitual ‘loser’ meant I was accustomed to leaving things behind by mistake and then desperately trying to retrieve them. But this was different: it was the first time I had ever knowingly walked away from my possessions. After Billie’s death I realised I could replace everything I owned – but I could never replace her. It made me think about all the years I was wasting sticking out a bad relationship. Nothing would bring Billie back, but I could get my own life back. And happily, by leaving my ex that night, I did.

Over the past few years I’ve tried all sorts of techniques to stop losing stuff. I have a special shelf in my bedroom where I put all the things I frequently misplace so I can keep tabs on them. I do mental checklists when leaving anywhere – keys, phone, bag, wallet – and I try not to daydream when travelling on public transport. Yet, I still arrive home from work missing at least one thing I started the day with.

Losing stuff is annoying. It’s an inconvenience and, more often than not, an expense. Losing people is a tragedy, something that shakes you to the core and changes your whole perspective on life. But loss, even the most profound kind, has a purpose – it creates the space to find something new. In my case, a tragic loss led me to discover real happiness and fall in love with someone who is kind enough to ask me constantly if I’m sure I’ve ‘got everything’. And now, regardless of what I may have lost along the way, the answer is always yes.

‘FREUD ARGUED THAT WE NEVER LOSE WHAT WE REALLY WANT, BUT I BET HE NEVER LEFT A HELMUT LANG BLAZER IN A SOHO BAR’