Sylvia Wynter's Dream

Writing prompt 1| October 2 2023| Jason Tomlinson

It’s not easy to talk about loss in any context because to speak on it is to recognize there is something being willingly or unwillingly extracted from your life. In a way it considered more stolen than loss as wants to lose anything but it’s an important facet of life. In regard to loss, I am choosing to talk about how I lost my childhood toy. As a child I had a toy that I loved more than anything else and its was a teenage mutant ninja turtle toy I got from a KFC Kid’s meal (if your old enough to remember that you have absolutely no reason to shame me about how old I am).

As a kid I didn’t have favorites and I would decide that thing was my favorite because people said it was normal to have favorites (which is why to this day Blue is still my favorite colour) but that toy was different. To this day, sit me in a therapist office, I could not tell you what was so important about it. It just meant something to me which is why it hurt so much when I lost it. How it happened was more of a mystery however that requires some context. My mother (God bless that woman) knew that the people around me were mainly hoping to use me for the PlayStation 2 I had.  However, she was creative in how she told us no with the point being that she told us no (For the tenth million time) and I remember I was playing with my cousin and it was made believe, you know fake imaginary buildings etc. I was 12 at the time and we had finished playing around 6pm (I assume cause it as evening time) and I placed all my toys after the storage (I used a bin and a basket). Now before the theorist start, this was after he had left so no, he did steal it (I think) and the next day I was playing I couldn’t find it.

Now when I say panic ensued. I searched everywhere for the toy, but it was gone and it now feels thematically poetic as I had felt like it was the last days of my childhood and I wasn’t even remotely close to ready. However, I need it because I don’t think I would have started to move on otherwise. My attachment to my childhood at the time was the same way I view that toy. Something to be treasure and guarded with my life but in life as certain as death is, loss is constant. Its fate stealing something from you when you may or may not need it in order to push you in a specific direction. Its not always good or bad but its definitely pushing you somewhere.