For the past fifteen minutes and thirty two seconds I have been rewriting a message to my friend who, ten hours, forty nine minutes ago told me she was lost. Yes, I could have replied sooner. No, I was not busy I was watching tv and sleeping.

I have considered possibly not even replying to her text as she may have forgotten about it anyway. I had redrafted it enough times to find myself lost in trying to find the correct way to word what I want to say. I don’t know what I want to say at all.

“What do you mean?”

“Want to talk about it?”

“What made you feel lost?”

“What happened?”

“Are you alright?”

“Did you tell your therapist about it?”

“Is it because of the exams?”

“Me too.”

These are my candidates. The last one is self cantered.

I think it would be good to have a tv channel that could tell me every possible reply to ‘I’m lost’ right now. So I walk to my living room, fall down onto the couch and flick through a few channels. Obviously I’m aware that this show does not exist so I pause on the news hoping that someone in the world has made a major breakthrough and created a book of replies to any possible scenario.

The news replies to my current scenario exactly the way I wanted it to, but in slightly the wrong context.

“Teen girl by the name of Sarah Dunn reported missing by parents Henry and Faith Dunn. The worried parents claim that daughter Sarah left their family home in Southwest California at quarter to nine Monday evening and hasn’t been seen since. If anyone has heard news of seventeen year old Sarah we urge you to contact the police immediately. That’s the two o’clock news. I’m Kate Peterson. “

Now I find myself to be sitting up looking at what may just have been her last text.

“I’m lost. “