It’s been months since I’ve picked up a chess piece. Which is funny considering there used to be a time in which a day couldn’t go by without me playing a game. For years, in person, online with friends, against computers, I was always playing. Was I any good? No. Not at all. These days my travel chess set (because of course I have multiple sets) sits on my bay window in my dining room, completely set up and ready for me to make a move. To the outside observer it would just look like the game is waiting patiently for me to begin again. But I know differently. I know it is taunting me. It knows I’m too chicken to play. It knows I’m too scared to lose…because that seems to be what my life is about lately; always on the losing side and never, ever, winning.

It’s amazing the difference a year makes. It’s amazing the difference a small change in situation can make. There’s that old saying that goes “Some people come into our lives for a reason, a season, or a lifetime.” And for the most part, I really do believe that. But I also feel that I have not really found any of my lifetime people yet. Besides family, books have been my only constant for so many years. I used to think it was me who wasn’t making the effort to keep people in my life. Like chess, maybe I was giving up too easily when things were getting too hard. The whole mentality of push people away before they push you. Or in the realm of chess, give up while you aren’t really good, but haven’t completely failed.

But, as always, I digress.

I miss chess. I miss my chess buddy. I miss using my brain in a way that feels normal, like I am at home. I need to remind myself that it’s ok that I took a break. I was sad. I felt defeated. I just didn’t see the point. Sometimes it was so hard for me to separate chess from spending time with the people I played with that I didn’t really know what I was enjoying. Did I really like playing the game or did I simply like the company I was playing with.

While I honestly feel like it was a little bit of both, there’s only one way to find out.

Pawn to e4.