Day 9: Lost

When I was 4 or 5, I am not sure the exact age, I had gone to the store with my sister, aunt, and uncle. I want to say it was the Piggly Wiggly, but it might have been the dollar store near the Piggly Wiggly.

Me and my sister had been looking up at the toys. She swears that she told me she was going somewhere else. I don't remember her telling me that.

All I know is I looked up, and I couldn't find her. I went through the store frantically looking for her, and couldn't find her. I wandered through the whole store and didn't see anyone familiar.

I swore that I had been left behind. I went to the parking lot to see if they were there. I thought maybe they had gone to the car.

I was sobbing by the time, and had convinced myself I was going to have to live forever lost in the parking lot. I remember sitting on the stoop and bawling my eyes out. I was trying to think how I would eat, since I doubt there was much food to be found in the parking lot. I am not sure why I didn't think I could live in the store, but I was convinced that I deserved to live in the parking lot.

There was no way I could have found my way home. I have always had a bad sense of direction, and I felt I deserved to be abandoned, and forgotten.

Someone came to find me, not sure if it was my aunt or another customer in the store. But I was reunited with my family.

My aunt didn't trust me after that. I felt like a failure, because she thought I had run off. And it was hard for me to explain the extreme terror that even at that age I had a fear that I deserved to be abandoned.