A letter from Jan 09, 2023

dear future me, i just read the last of these things that i wrote (in january of 2019, delivered january of 2020), and it's strange to me how small my world felt. it all revolved around school, school and the tiny remaining pieces of our hometown i hadn't gotten rid of yet, but mostly school - i urged myself to read when i felt hopeless and uncertain, and do whatever it took to remember why i loved to read, probably because i needed to know why i was so insistent on torturing myself to remain in an abusive relationship with the thing i hated more than anything. when i wrote that, i was even still living with shannon - isn't that crazy? i had no inkling of how small my life really was. somehow i always end up thinking that the things around me are important enough that they will still be there in a year's time, in two or three year's time. it's honestly such a joke that that letter would be delivered in 2020. doesn't that feel so far away? but it was also like a reset point for us. not immediately, but it was easily the worst semester of schooling you've ever been through, and you dropped out the following fall - because of course you did. i don't know if you've gone back to finish your degree or not, at this point i honestly don't really care. because right now, and for the past two, but really three, but really 23, years, what you really feel more than anything is the anger. the excuses i made for all those people who never deserved it. the patience and attention, the love and adoration, the fear, the shame, the guilt, every feeling which soured your stomach and distorted your view of the world, and for what? i dedicated every ounce of passion to these ideas - ideas about education and art and connecting with people and how i was going to do it, and how i was going to be so different from the adults who had raised me, and on and on. and i was so bright, like a machine always churning, at a level of complexity which expanded ever-outwards and spiraled in on itself so richly. i thought such delusional and stupid things, like that i might one day like to write or study for a living, and even such idiotic fantasies like becoming a teacher, which has become nothing short of disgusting to me in the present. in 2019, i thought my world would transform so much in one year that i might not recognize or understand the person receiving the letter in 2020. which i guess was true, because at that point i had stopped living with shannon (something that seemed like an impossibility at the time, but painfully inevitable in retrospect), and shortly after that, the whole world would fall apart. now apparently i think 3 years is a more suitable amount of time for my life to change. maybe because i am so much more hopeless, because my life has slowed down so dramatically, i'm pushing away the date a little further. even if 5 years still feels too far away, one year is far too close. because what have i done in one year, in two, or four? each year i do less and less. when i put it that way, maybe i *should* bring the date closer - to up the chances that i will be alive to receive it. but back to 2020, which still feels near enough to me that i notice the traces of it in my life - i guess that's why i was still writing about high school and plainview in the 2019 letter; it must have felt just close enough back then. in 2020, it was like the tiny, ugly, evil little world of academia finally exploded into pieces right before me, and suddenly i was smarter and stupider than i ever had been in my life, and more than that, it didn't matter, and more than that, it was like my life really started at that point. it's still too near to me for me to look back with anything but anger, anger and hurt and disgust and disappointment, even if maybe *you've* found some peace with it. like a disease laying dormant or like a cancer in your life, the abuse of those people - your professors, first and foremost, but also your peers, your high school teachers, your parents, your friends (and more abstractly, this country - and on and on) - was way too painful to bear, then obviously, easily, ravaged the rest of your life and your memories, leaving almost nothing unscathed (the one exception, for now, being the orchestra - another fantasy i can't return to). it's completely laughable to me at this point that i wrote in my 2019 letter to speak to my professors for help and advice when you feel alone - as though that advice didn't only further isolate me whenever i tried, right? something i would come to realize was that every person in that bubble of a world would do anything to drag someone else back in, all these writhing little worms so desperate to validate themselves and one another, they'll do anything to hold onto you, to keep abusing you. in 2020 i must have found it very destabilizing to leave, but ultimately very freeing. and to be fair, i was right - my life did not *start* until i had dropped out of school. i don't know whose life i was living. i was just so desperate, all the time. that's really the main memory - agonizing desperation. it's all very ugly and very sad. i'm sorry if it sounds too exaggerated. but this stuff really ruined your life. so that was a whole thing. through 2021, when life started to be filled with different kinds of things, some good and some bad, like working at the garden, and then the museum, etc. a different kind of life than the one you were living before. toward the second half of 2021, life became very dark. i don't know what changed. if i had to guess in retrospect, maybe it was because i had been living in such a time and energy-consuming sinkhole (school) that i could never look around me, never feel hurt, never feel angry, never feel hopeless - you can even see it in the 2019 letter, the way i just pitifully stave off hopelessness with any random sentiment at my disposal, barely dredging up anything of substance. "just keep reading, i guess? just do anything? just don't **** yourself?" but where do you go when you can't turn to all of those busy little meaningless things anymore? where did i go? life became very dark, and good feelings, feelings of belonging with other people, feelings of being loved or wanted, began to shrink. shrink, and shrink, and shrink. it's all so strange, now. a year of that. this lacks detail because i don't care or remember. if you want to know when certain things happened, when people left our lives, when jobs changed or living circumstances changed, there are other ways to check. in august or september of 2022, you got into a fight (or whatever it was) with michael in a diner after climbing with a big group of people. the very dim light in your life went out. i don't know how else to talk about this. it's impressive that i've even held onto this job at the museum through all this. but the museum, like fanfiction and the silly world of chatting with strangers on the internet, are really the only things left - the only "lights," i guess. i spent a long time talking about school, and your teachers, and all the liberation of leaving that place. but i'm not sure if i have as many words about this. i don't know where you are or what you're doing or thinking, what you think of me, but it's this that makes me wonder if you'll be alive to receive this. something very crucial changed that day. and wherever you are, whatever you're feeling, i'm telling you that *i* feel utterly alone, an aloneness that swallowed up everything that came before it. a string of failure after failure after a year of failures - that's what 2022 did to your life. to my life. we began the year losing nugi and losing ellie, then ended it feeling smaller and angrier and lonelier than ever. we went to taiwan and saw the future where everyone leaves and they're better for it, or they're not, but either way you aren't a part of it. everyone has their lives to live except for you. except for me. (and yes! yes, you ******* idiot, that's so self-centered and conceited to think, isn't it! well, even if you think this is pathetic, i don't know what else to tell you. that i've already considered it? that i know? that i know, and i feel like this anyway? that i know, and i can't struggle my way out of it? if you're going to look back with disdain and embarrassment, you're the same as anyone else. you should know better.) there are a million ways to rationalize this and re-approach it, re-re-re-re-approach it, just so you can continue living that life that looks so attractive and meaningful, so you can look like you're doing something. but the truth is - the truth right now is - that i don't care. the dog laying down to die, to get beat, to starve kind of i don't care. maybe you're yelling at me that food is just in reach, or maybe you're already dead. but the truth of *my* life is that i am laying, not living. you know, there was a whole thing - i reframed my thinking about my life and began to really feel like an *animal*. just, undeniably and completely subhuman, and unreachable by any of the people around me. i don't know how to get back, and i don't know how to go on like this. another thing, you know, all of the people around me who used to unashamedly and genuinely tell me that they *loved* me, who used to hold me because they wanted to, who used to smile when they looked at me - none of them are here anymore, you know? for one reason or another. mostly bad reasons. mostly reasons that make you feel like you're crazy. mostly reasons that feel like your fault. i wonder if you'll find someone who looks at you like that. but what reason is there to believe in that stupid stuff anymore? i'm sure if you're having a good time when you read this, you'll jump to say it's not true, that people love you. and if you're having a bad time, you'll know just what i'm talking about. and if you're dead, then, i don't know, i'm really sorry to whoever is reading this. you don't need to feel bad or wish you'd told me that you loved me, etc. i probably knew somewhere in all of this. i mean, i do know. i know. i know that people love me, whatever that is. but the other stuff - failure and failure and etc. - i just don't know anymore, if i can bear it. or bear it with any integrity. it all feels so strange and uncertain. i love you all and the world back, otherwise i wouldn't try, but it's all very strange. 2022 was a really hard year. i don't know what else to say to you. i don't have anything to ask of you - no requests to reach out to people or keep in touch (i haven't even been doing that in the present, i don't care if you do), no questions about what you may have accomplished or not, no funny jokes or words of encouragement to offer you. three years feels far enough that it's hard to imagine what you might be doing - but not so far that i imagine it's that different. it could be, but life is small these days. even mom and dad feel closer than ever before. i never thought i would start thinking like that. but it all folds over itself. it's 2023 now. i work at the museum of natural history in the live exhibits department, taking care of insects. i like a lot of things about this job, and after doing it for a year, it feels like a bit of a fixture in my life at this point. i'm working on some different fanfictions but i haven't written so much since before the taiwan trip. i'm living with dale, peanut butter, and jelly. michael and caitlin are still here. cephas is still here. i'm really grateful for those things, even if it doesn't seem like it. i'm doing my best to cherish them, even with the undercurrent of uncertainty running through everything. if you are alive, i'm actually really sorry. i can barely bear all of this loss and grief - and grief, and grief, and grief, and so on - as it is. in three years, i'm sure you'll have suffered more and again and again, things i can't imagine or i don't want to think about right now. i wonder if you did it alone? i'm just really sorry that you have to carry all this and more. it's ugly and cruel, and i don't know what to say besides i'm sorry. it's really hard. and please don't laugh if you have it all figured it out. so is that it? maybe i'll end with whatever the first poem that comes to mind is. I loved my friend. He went away from me. There's nothing more to say. The poem ends, Soft as it began,— I loved my friend. -- emily