Lost House Key

I lost the spare house key.

A past version of myself would have obsessed over the loss of this key. Every single item in the home has its place, and when an item isn’t in said place, I would lose my mind. I would laser focus on finding the item to put it back as soon as humanly possible. Nothing else mattered, besides retrieving the item. While scavenging, I would play out the worst possible scenarios about what will happen because this item irresponsibly lost itself. How rude and incredibly frustrating.

The current version of myself is proud of my recent behavior. Though I was initially anxious over the lost key, I retraced my steps and checked all the pockets. Even though the key was still missing, I was able to detach the house key from my car key set and use that key to lock the house while I walked my dog. I was able to wait on finding the key to take care of her. After Harli was walked, I went outside to look over the ground we walked this morning. No luck; the key was still missing.

Once inside, I was still fairly calm about the lost key. I went through each room trying to find it; however, the search did not include anger cleaning. Past Version America would have taken her frustration out on undeserving clutter. I was able to look past the obstacles and calmly look for the key. When it was time to make dinner, there was still no key. Past Version would have kept on looking until the key was found, but Current Me was starting to get hungry.

While I was eating my dinner, I was able to thoughtfully figure out future steps. 

I did not throw myself into an apocalyptic scenario, which was my previous go-to when this happened. She would know, without a doubt, she would be violently robbed during the night. As a young child, I was unusually aware of where the house keys were. My mom and sister had a tendency to leave the keys in the outside lock of the house, probably since they were juggling other items while also trying to unlock the door. However, this started a decades-long checking behavior of making sure the security of our house was protected since the keys were secured inside the house. Not only was an item not in its proper spot, the possibility of my house being unsecured would have kept me up all night.

Those thoughts were able to fly past. I didn’t emotionally attach to them while they took hold of my mental state. I mindfully watched when they flew by. My months of meditating daily absolutely unlocked my ability to see the thoughts and let them go.

I have worked with my therapist to come up with mantras to pull out to use to prevent anxiety from taking root. When the mantras are practiced, it becomes easy to access them. In this case, the mantra was, “Look at the evidence.”

The evidence was I used the key to unlock the house after I walked Harli the night before. There was a chance the key was inside. However, I took out the trash and walked Harli this morning, so there was a chance it was also outside. I had to look for more evidence.

I have a nightly routine checking-behavior which includes checking that the key is inside (conveniently located near the dog walking supplies). Since I do this every single night when I’m home, it’s hard to remember the key being there last night, since I have thousands of memories checking the key’s location. However, if I did notice the key was missing, I would have looked last night. I felt like this evidence showed it was likely to be in the house. Still, I need more evidence.

My husband and I live in a very safe neighborhood. Fact. Our town is very quiet and the police show up quickly if needed. If the key is lost outside, evidence shows we are likely to be safe.

More evidence: We have a house alarm system. The app shows when a door is opened and closed and when the alarm goes off. If someone were to use the lost key, the alarm would sound and we’d be alerted. There was no indication of the house doors being opened, except the explainable times my husband left for work and when I walked the dog.

If we have to change the locks, which seems a bit extreme, we can. Duplicate keys can be made. Also, true.

Evidence shows I can sleep peacefully tonight even though I lost the spare house key.