PART 1
I'm not sure how to write these anymore. You know we've been sending these back and off off-and-on for over 5 years now, right? We started the Wattpad in 2021. I almost forgot that before I could mark that somewhere. That's got to be as good a place as ever to start this.
I want to say I'm too nervous to reread some of the more recent entries, given the deep, echo-y temporal(?) canyons of emotional distance that exist within the long stretches between each of those posts.¹ We've had far worse times together, ones where we are genuinely at odds with each other, but this more emotionally temperate time almost feels worse in a way only the brain could recognize. It's not exactly like we're at odds with each other - although we haven't been as chill as we could be, either - but we are at odds with each other our distance. I really wanted to make that sentence work by inverting how I used the collocation "at odds" from its use relating to people at the beginning, to its use relating to things at the end, but I'm not sure how to make it totally clear that I have shifted gears from referring to us as subjects to referring to us as objects. I'm also tired, and trying to write this in one sitting like I used to. It's simultaneously easier than it used to be, but the work seems more difficult. I'm far less mentally ill than I used to be, so I have less desire to pour it all out here. I'm a more structural thinker now. That's why most of what I have written so far is this very meta shit about me trying to figure out how to get the language right.
I'm already running into the issue I have had with the last few posts I have written to you, which is that few of them feel like they're written to you. They read like they're written to me, which they were. In fact, long before our recent lull in communication, most of my Wattpad posts have been written to me. After the third year of our correspondence in these channels, I started referring to this as "the Wattpad" or "my diary" interchangeably (I think you already know that). Maybe that was the start of our troubles. Before then, in the Weird Times (2019-2022), most of these posts, even the ones that included my first post-high school attempts at poetry, were very lovingly addressed to you. I'm not at all trying to get back to that for a litany of obvious reasons, but, at the very least, I would like for this to feel as if you're the reader it has in mind.²
When I'm walking or on my bike, I think about starting these posts with a serious of carefully-worded, long-ish questions that I intentionally leave open-ended. I don't know if I have ever done that. I'm afraid it will seem lazy, like I'm leaving the bulk of the experience of this post to take place in your mind, but my hope is that, if my questions are good enough, I'll address you better. There's often little harm in trying, as I've recently learned.
Here goes nothing (in no particular order):
-How are your today as of reading this?
-How have you felt about your life from the day immediately after your convocation to now?
How has it changed?
-How are your sisters?
What have you done with them?
What are they doing now?
-Have you and F made up since the thing that happened between you and her at the beginning of last month?
What even happened?
How is she these days?
What has changed with her since you went off to East Stroudsburg?
-Are you and L still thinking about moving to Lancaster or Harrisburg? How do those conversations go?
Is there a lot of him making decisions and you adding onto them or vice versa?
