journal entry — undated. late april-early may 2025
It’s been a while since our phylogenetic tree branched out in separate directions and I became someone you are not. It’s hard to say when, exactly, it happened, not that I’m a loss for possible dates (Feb 21, ’24; Mar 9, ’24; Apr 12, ’24; Oct 4, ’24…). It’s rather that it wasn’t a quick transformation that can be easily pinpointed; it’s a continuous, arduous, ill-defined process that we are still in the midst of now.
There are some discrete details populating the timeline between you and me, like how I stopped caring about outside clothes on the bed or spending money on coffee. But the real difference between you and I is that you know your worth, you are sure of it, and I am not.
I am all you wanted to become — I ran a 20:35 at Sectionals this year, Abby and I were the captains, I got into Colgate (your top school back in August of 2023), I got a blue Mazda last year and I made a lot of money working last summer, and my hair is so long and I’m a finalist for the national merit scholarship, and I finally got those Uggs and I’ve been writing songs on Grandpop’s guitar.
Considering how much you wanted all that, and how hard you worked toward it, you’d think I wouldn’t find it all completely insignificant and meaningless compared to one 19-year-old who willingly uses the wrong to & too (and their, there & they’re) and generally doesn’t show interest in me any more than I show interest in drinking espresso (sometimes it makes me feel cool but I wouldn’t name my kids after it). But that’s where we’re at, my dear. My ability to see more than a day into the future has deteriorated right alongside my actual sight. And that sucks, because I’m taller now, so I have a better view of all the old buildings in town from the top of Thatchers Hill, and of all the cute ways people try to prevent their hair from getting caught under their backpack straps, walking class to class, and of the littlest sprout of a flower on the forest floor, and of the honey-golden sunlight infusing the young green canopy of trees above.
All I’d need to do is put on my heavier prescription glasses, blink once or twice, and remember that I’m going to France in 2 months and I love the friends I’ve made this year and I’m almost out of high school and I have everything (barring entrance to the Ivy League) I could reasonably have gotten by now.
But I don’t put on my glasses. I don’t look up. My eyes are cast downward, as always, trained on my phone screen where I’m frantically navigating Snapchat to check his location. Is he active? Is he at his dorm? Is he with the girls on his team right now? Is he responding to that girl from the summer before me? Is he watching The Notebook, thinking of the time we watched it together?
How did we get here?
The Dilemma Of It All 