Lost

He talked to me about others he deemed to be lost. He talked about what it meant to be lost as if there was only one way to be lost. He talked about it from the perspective of an outsider, and I pretended to be an outsider too. If I were to tell him I was an insider, that I was lost too, this would only fill him with loss and he wouldn't know how to cope, he wouldn't deal with being lost as I do. He would be like someone who lost something, which is different from not knowing the way. Being lost, not knowing the way, can be very different from loss.

[First draft.]