My LOST Moment

Nick, 25 — Chicago, Illinois (USA) :

My Lost Moment came in the last minutes of season 3…
…but first let’s take a step back. I owned a small business called Lombardo Barnyard. Its timeline ran congruent to that first few seasons of Lost. Lombardo Barnyard starting around the first season, and Lombardo Barnyard ending when…
We never made any money and we never had success in the true sense. I was young and it was just something I created with a friend, kind of a joke really, to put on events and impress people. We had fashion shows of transforming dresses and clothes made out of garbage. We hosted dance parties sponsored by Pepsi. We wrote books and created collectable card games featuring our friends as the hero cards. We did this for years all the while losing fans and money until one day, during a poorly attended 24-hour dance party, I just couldn’t take it anymore. I ran home mid-event crying and freezing. I took a nap, but not before sending an email calling it quits to the world. It was over, Lombardo Barnyard was dead.
When I awoke from my nap it was all a rush, I was free, it was over, I was supposed to be happy, right? The next few months I put on a big smile to the world, all my friends, my family, they said, “You look good, more alive.” It was a façade. Inside I was dying. No more events. No more projects. No more standing in front of crowds of people, speaking, dancing, presenting, and having them follow my every word. Lombardo Barnyard was the past. This is when I saw the finale of Season 3.
We find Jack sporting an unkempt beard and sitting on the floor of his apartment surrounded by maps and charts. I saw myself. In the shadows of my own despair, in my moments alone from those who were happy for me, I too would lay facedown and shirtless on the floor. Around me boxes of old clothes I was going to turn into crazy fashions, notes on books I was going to write. Cans of pop were spilled, not from a party, but from my degrading sense of cleanliness. I was falling apart. I was Jack Shepard.
And there he was, a shrived piece of who he used to be. Jack Shepard, going back to the one person who would understand, his partner in all of this, Kate. And he explained the Golden Ticket, wanting the plane to crash, how he’d sacrifice anyone and everything to go back. I’d give it all for one more moment in front of those crowds. On the Island Jack was under so much pressure leading the people. They hung on his every word for survival. People would live and die by his word. How can one man handle such pressure, Jack couldn’t, and either could I, we snapped, both of us. We wanted off the Island. But then we found what was off the Island… Nothing. Nothing is on the other side. I was there. Jack was there. We were there together, same time same place. And he yelled, “We have to go back! We have to go back!” I yelled that to my Lombardo Barnyard partner, and he, like Kate, just walked away. And there we were alone with nothing… with nothing.
When the episode ended all my friends gasped in glee about what treasures were hidden months away in season 4. While they speculated and theorized, I slipped out a side door. No one saw me. I could only stare straight ahead and squinted to keep my tears in. I’ve never felt this way, so connected to a character. He was me, on screen. And I walked for miles alone outside, not able to keep my thoughts and emotions together. After hours of walking I wondered into a gym I had a pass for but seemed to never use. And there, in my street clothes I ran. Tears ran down my face and I just ran.
I ran all night… and I never got back.