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It was late at night when I parked my Jeep outside my apartment after yoga class. The moment I turned off the ignition, I let myself be distracted by grabbing my phone and texting someone to look at the moon. As I headed upstairs, I continued texting and laughing, completely oblivious to my black mat that I’d left on the passenger seat floor as I carried on with our conversation and a little late-night catching up at work.
It wasn’t until early the next morning when I glanced at the space along the hallway where I always placed my mat that I registered its absence. I know it sounds strange, but in that moment, I knew it had been stolen. Not just forgotten. Gone.
In the 45 or so seconds it took me to begrudgingly make my way to the back alley and my parking space to confirm, I cycled through self-blame and indignance and outrage and back to self-blame as I imagined someone breaking into my Jeep and recklessly taking what belonged to me. Correction. What I had carelessly left for them to take.
I reminded myself it was only a mat. That it could be replaced. That there were yogic principles that I could embrace. I tried to summon these but pretty quickly disregarded them as my thoughts raced to whether I should stalk the alley in search of someone lugging my mat and I worriedly ruminated as to how I’d afford a replacement. I thought about the almost ten years that I’d been unrolling that mat, day after day and often multiple times a day.
Yet when I saw my mat had actually disappeared, I felt something else entirely.
Relief.
It was not entirely the sort of selfless relief that comes from knowing someone who is unhoused maybe had a cushier place to sleep that night. It was not altogether a charitable belief that one of the regulars in the back alley who created drama simply had a bad night. My relief was almost exclusively and overwhelmingly for myself.
I had catharted on that mat. Cried on that mat. Overcame fear and learned to arm balance on that mat. Gotten outraged on that mat. Understood how to be still on that mat. Began teaching on that mat. Confronted more than I’d wanted to on that mat. Pleaded with whatever gods that may or may not exist on that mat.
Throughout that, I had remembered who I was on that rectangle of natural rubber. I’d worked through past versions of myself, versions I no longer needed, versions who definitely weren’t and still aren’t perfect, considering how I was still feeling a lot of contempt for whoever stole my mat.
Yet in that instant, it felt as though I was no longer lugging all of that along with me each time I practiced yoga. Although I had loved everything about that mat, I started to contemplate a different aspect of its eventual replacement—a mat with an entirely different look, vibe, and brand.
Others who have had their mats stolen tend to describe an understandable feeling of melancholy afterward. Some say they were forced to confront an emotional attachment never knew they’d had. Given the intensity of my relief, it seems my attachment was to more than the mat. But maybe the emotions we experience when we lose something that’s accompanied us through eras of our life aren’t so much about losing the thing. It’s about losing a part of our story, or at least a physical reminder of it.
The attachment I’m still working through is the last of my resentment toward whoever stole it. That person unknowingly ended up stealing a lot of heavy emotions that I’d been lugging around. Or at least, they ended up with the physical reminder of that baggage. But it felt sort of the same. They say karma’s a bitch. So as emotionally loaded as that mat was, to the person who has it, good luck.