10.
year 10, letter 6, 1:55 pm
12 March 2019
It’s kind of like running laps, it turns out. In the second half of the first lap, my body starts rejecting reality. In the second lap, I am more aware of my body, and I need to start focusing on my breathing. In the third lap, I need to ignore the pain, just push through. And everything after, I’m aware that I’m running, but my present state starts to fade into the background. There’s a rhythm to it, it turns out, but I’m looking towards an end.
I guess that’s where these things start to differ.
10 years is a long time, and I guess I can’t really hide my obsession with quantifying the passed time. 10 times I’ve been past this point relative to the sun on a rock hurtling through space. I guess that’s all it means, quantified by the years. In more concrete terms, I’m 10 years older, which is something I never really even stopped to think about. It’s a doubling. The last time I saw you, I was 10 years old.
I was pretty small then, at least relative to now. But maybe less troubled. Who knows? They aren’t wrong when they say that it’s the what-if’s that hurt most. I know the past couple of times I’ve written to you, I talk about how much letting go and forgetting is troubling me. That hasn’t changed. There’s a dull acceptance that’s growing now. I guess I’m growing into my life a little bit.
I’m in Budapest, now, studying mathematics. I think I do want to go back to engineering, though. I’m ready to come back to earth, in some sense. I want to work to build a more beautiful world around me, and in some sense I feel some responsibility. Math is incredible and beautiful, but I can’t shake the sense that it’s a luxury. I think I want to be out among the people, because mostly I am tired of being alone. Perhaps do something for the environment, perhaps do something to make peoples’ lives brighter. I am tired of being alone. I do feel that the world is a wonderful, beautiful place, and I want to experience more of it. I do miss home, though. There is a piece of my heart (or my soul, or some otherwise metaphorical part of me) buried in that hill with you, and that’s home. There’s some of it in the house on Country Lane, there’s some of it that Mom and Aaron and Mr. Carl carry around with them, that grandma and grandpa and grandma carry with them. There’s some of it with Sabo, and some of it in every place I’ve stayed for a while.
That’s changed, too. I’ve been so many places, so many temporary homes. I’m beginning to appreciate what it means to have a permanent home, and I worry that I won’t have one for a while. I’m appreciating more what it means to be able to come home to something every day. I want a home. I want certainty in my life, because everything feels so uncertain.
I’m starting to learn what it means to get older. The passing of time scares me a bit. I started seeing Levi this year. I think we’re both a little lost, as people, but at the same time it feels good to hold on to somebody, a chance to be somebody a little bit new with somebody else. I don’t know that you’d approve, but I guess you aren’t here to give your approval. That’s the real passing of time, isn’t it? I stopped wondering whether or not you’d be proud of the way I’d be living. It’s a little bit freeing, shouldering one less expectation, and I suppose that makes me more myself, or whatever they say. But putting it that way puts a sort of dull ache in my chest again. It feels pathetic not just missing you, but missing…missing you.
It’s been 10 years. I don’t really know how long of a time that is, to be honest. I also don’t know how much of myself I’ve built upon the rock that is your absence, which is kind of a strange foundation to have. Almost as much of myself as I built up with you around.
I should tell you about who I am, or at least who I think I am. I’ve spent long enough waxing poetic about abstract things.
Today, I am a math student studying for a semester abroad in Budapest, but I attend Olin College of Engineering, a small, new, but well respected institution at the front end of experimental engineering education. I like to draw, listen to music, and play video games. I love most forms of art, though I think I can be too strongly affected by stories we tell each other. My dream is still roughly the same; I want to move the world in a positive direction. I have been depressed for an amount of time that I cannot quantify. A constant feeling of inadequacy plagues me, and doesn’t really ever go away. I am lonely, most of the time. I can feel how easily I would send myself down a path I couldn’t afford to follow. I think I can behave recklessly, especially when I just want to be held by someone. I can feel my bonds with other people growing weaker. I do know I need to work on that, maybe individualism isn’t everything it’s cut out to be.
Maybe I should start reminding myself to live as a daughter you’d be proud to have again.
When I think of you, it’s still the same couple memories I keep referring to, but maybe I can dig up some new ones this time, too. It’s you at my softball game, eating sunflower seeds and changing the scoreboard. It’s you in the downstairs office, it’s the top of your head as you carry me on your shoulders. It’s you getting in the car to go referee at a youth soccer game on the weekend. It’s you helping out at the computer lab at the elementary school. It’s the handprints my classmates left for you after your first stroke at Mission Hospital. It’s you playing catch with me in the park by the elementary school with the big green softball. It’s you sitting on the floor of your closet, brokenly packing your things. It’s you on a ski slope, stiffly turning your way down the mountain. It’s you lying in a bed, missing a quarter of your skull, a church outside the window. It’s you sitting at my third grade spelling bee, tears coursing down your face, you laughing at the jokes in Spongebob with me and Aaron. It’s me preparing for your funeral, not fully aware of what’s happening, me crying in the laundry room, thinking that it was almost a performance, because that’s what I was supposed to do. The loss didn’t hit me till later. It’s your rhinestone studded glasses that you wore to pick me up at the elementary school, your blue Camry. Your jackets, your tennis shoes. Your maneuvering of a soccer ball. Your go-to dish to cook, pork with potato strips. There’s you telling me to keep running around the track at the elementary school, me throwing a tantrum. There’s me throwing away all your playboy magazines that you had at your desk and upstairs. I don’t know if anybody else knew about them, but I threw them away for you. It’s your smile, your teeth, your handwriting, the way one side of your face would pull up first. Your yellow shirt that I wore for a month after you were gone. Pinching your nose on weekend mornings to wake you up.
It’s not enough. I wish there were more, so many more memories. I wish there were 10 years more memories than I have with me. I feel greedy.
I’m appreciating more now how difficult it must have been after the first accident. But I’m also learning how strong mom was, and how hard it was for her, too, for years. But I don’t blame you for anything. I hold every memory close to my heart, and time has washed them into a sort of beige, tinged with fondness, radiating nostalgia for days gone by.
I just wish you were here for me to talk to. I wish I didn’t have to write you these letters, and I wish your presence in my life was defined by action, rather than absence and yearning. I wish you were here to watch Aaron grow up. He’s seventeen now, and you’d be so proud of him. He’s hardworking and wicked smart, and he’s attending Carnegie Mellon University in the fall. He’s competing in various national academic competitions this semester, and graduating high school in June. Mom has mellowed out a lot. She’s grown a lot, too. I think you’d be proud of her. I appreciate her more every day as a hardworking woman who really did her best to hold our family together. That’s an unfailing strength.
I love you, Dad. I should have been home to bring you flowers today. I love you.