Author and Columnist
Writing the last of these made me bawl. Apparently, forgiving who I was for the mistakes he made would be cathartic. Hard to believe, I know.
My sobbing worried Amber but telling her that I had been writing sufficed to explain it.
I am sticking with the conceit of writing this to my previous self.
Kate is visiting a college in MA. I just missed her so much I got very depressed. Not sad, depressed. Because I knew no matter how hard I tried, I could not physically contact her.
I don't know how sincere you were about this, vis-a-vis depression. You were overly attached to Kate, but that is the nature of relationships one's senior year in high school. You were anxious at the idea that she would go to college far from you and you would lose her, a realistic assumption. Aside from Vassar, you investigated only colleges in her potential proximity, as though you could or should follow her.
You were addicted to this idea that love is a permanent state.
You couldn't have afforded that Massachusetts college, just as you couldn't afford Vassar despite their courting you.
You did by your junior year in college follow her to SUNY New Paltz, at which point the two of you had not been a couple for almost a year. You might have gone to New Paltz anyway. While you were a student there, it bothered you that New Paltz never felt like yours. (Years after, New Paltz--the town and not the college--did come to belong to you during long, necessary nights. We will get there. No rush.)
[...] I did send to messages of luck and love... I do so much love her so terribly. It is not, and could not be, conditional. [...] Only if she turned into someone who she isn't, but she wouldn't. And I would still so greatly love her.
When she left you, Kate didn't become something she wasn't, though you tried to tell yourself otherwise. She only ever became more herself. With few exceptions--none of which leap to mind as I write this--that is what people do. You have become far more yourself by sacrificing or releasing things you thought then constituted your identity. You would not believe how much yourself you are now, in part because you would feel I was a sell-out for having shorter hair for the last fifteen years. You accepted that you needed mental health treatment and meds, which was a huge step. (You are out of therapy now and seldom wish otherwise.) In general, you ceased to be so pretentious and insecure, neither of which served you.
And you do love Kate, though you have not seen her in person in over a decade. She's a good egg, the girl you knew, and the woman she became.
You had dinner with her ex-husband and daughter once. It was awkward.
I saw a pixy at work today.
That would have been the Mid-Hudson Children's Museum. You insisted that you would only take jobs you could boast of having, at least in the abstract. "I work at a children's museum" does have a better ring than "I mop piss out of the bubble machine because the new management wants me to quit."
She was about 4'9", with glitter in her hair and around her eyes, a pink dress that on anyone else would have been short, but on her it was below her knees, dripping with occult symbols, and most of all SHE TALKED LIKE ONE. She had a small, high, voice, but it wasn't squeaky. And her syntax was inverted. Like instead of "Shall we go there?["] She said[,] "There, shall we go?"
She sounds tedious and forced, so of course, her existence interested you. It showed both insecurity that she would pretend so hard and confidence that she committed so fully. You were always scared to be the sort of weird you were and so amplified a weirdness that was more expected. That artifice could be scorned and rejected because it wasn't you, thus what was inside could be safe from ridicule.
But I got laid off.
I have no recollection of what you are talking about. The only time you get laid off is from an educational publishing company that had always intended to ax the proofreaders (not that they told you this when you were hired). You were fired once, had your services discontinued twice, and quit every other job.
Maybe I can ask guidance for a new job? Yeah, good idea.
No, Thomm, this is a terrible idea, but you cannot know it yet. Your guidance counselor--blonde and young, and she lets you naps on the couch outside her office before rehearsal--does find you a gig. A woman has you spend time with her several hours every weekday under the guise of babysitting. You realize she was grooming you only when she tells you that, since her husband found out, she can't see you anymore. You will be confused and then horrified that you were almost a teenage gigolo. She does give you $20 and drives you to your house unmolested that day. (You would have reacted with screaming and flailing had she propositioned you, but you were too naive to suspect what was going on. You will think it is odd that she rarely left the room, would ply you with food, and would drive you around with her.)
Thomm Quackenbush is an author and teacher in the Hudson Valley. He has published four novels in his Night's Dream series (We Shadows, Danse Macabre, Artificial Gods, and Flies to Wanton Boys). He has sold jewelry in Victorian England, confused children as a mad scientist, filed away more books than anyone has ever read, and tried to inspire the learning disabled and gifted. He is capable of crossing one eye, raising one eyebrow, and once accidentally groped a ghost. When not writing, he can be found biking, hiking the Adirondacks, grazing on snacks at art openings, and keeping a straight face when listening to people tell him they are in touch with 164 species of interstellar beings. He likes when you comment.