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It was after the last yoga class of the night when I parked my Jeep outside my apartment. Admittedly, as I turned off the ignition, I let myself become distracted by reaching for my phone and texting someone to look at the moon. And I continued texting and laughing as I headed upstairs, completely oblivious to my black mat that I’d left on the passenger seat floor as I continued the conversation and settled into some 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 place my mat, that I registered its absence. It probably sounds sorta strange, but in an instant, I knew it had been stolen. Not just forgotten or misplaced. Gone.
In the 60 or so seconds it took me to begrudgingly make my way to my parking space in the back alley, I cycled through self-blame and indignance and outrage and back to self-blame. I was already imagining someone breaking into my Jeep and recklessly taking what belonged to me. Then I self-corrected and reminded myself that I had carelessly left for them to take. Still, I told myself I was entitled to feel a little violated for someone taking something I couldn’t afford to replace. Then I thought of someone having a cushier place to sleep that night. I also contemplated someone hawking it at the pawn shop across the street.
Thoughts still racing, 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. 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 reached the Jeep and confirmed that my mat was nowhere to be seen, I felt something else entirely.
Relief.
It was not entirely the sort of selfless relief that comes from knowing someone who is unhoused was a little better off or a charitable belief that one of the regulars in the back alley simply had a dramatic 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.
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.
As I walked back to my apartment, I started to contemplate its eventual replacement being a mat with an entirely different look, vibe, and brand. The only attachment I was still working through was 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 container for that baggage. But it felt sort of the same.
As emotionally loaded as that mat was, to the person who has it, good luck. They say karma’s a bitch. As for me, I’m thinking maybe karma dealt me the hand I needed and not the one I wanted.