Vessels

In the quarter before the pandemic hit, I took a creative writing class on memoirs. We’d sit around the square of tables that rolled if you ever even tried to lean on them, in the basement of the building that a person who once lived in the room right next to mine jumped from. And on the days that I would make it to class, I’d stand outside and see the wrinkled flowers on the steps, the candles no longer lit, rain having pooled in the wax that the fire once pushed away, the words written in his honor that he never got to hear when it mattered, and I’d wonder if that was exactly where his body landed. I’d wonder where he went after. I’d wonder if he’d gotten what he wanted. I’d hope that he did. And I’d go to class a few minutes late. There were no windows in there, but it didn’t matter because it was never sunny anyway. Not the way I remember it. But then again, I remember things wrong all the time.

We’d read published works, each other’s works, articles on the craft itself. We’d pull apart at ideas brought up, one at a time, over and over, until we realized that it was never about the story, not really. But it was always about whether or not you could make the reader care. Whether you could write so that they wouldn’t stop reading even if they weren’t paid to, even if they didn’t know you. The only people who ever read my work are people who know me. I wonder what it is about that that makes them care too.

I used to think that the draft I had written for class was good. It used to make me cry. I’d read it over and over again proud of myself and the praise I’d received in class. I’d roll around in the words that I could call my own and revel in the idea that all of the nothing I’d suffered through was worth something. My professor tells me to submit it to a writing competition and so I do. I don’t win and so I send it to my friends, raking through their minds for validation, for praise. I tell myself that I am special, worthy, untapped potential. I leave the document open in the back of my screen for months. I think about submitting it to other things, publishing things, making it longer, flushing it out into a masterpiece. I never did.

I don’t reread the draft anymore. I can’t. It doesn’t live up to any standards I prop up, any emotions I think I should have. I do not cry. I do not even tear up. I cringe instead at how clumsily I’d slapped it all together, puzzle pieces forced into one another, thinking it all fits perfectly only to step back and see that I’d grabbed pieces from ten different boxes. I can hear my professor’s voice in my mind saying, revise. But that’s not something I do. I don’t know how.

And so instead of doing everything else that I should be doing, I open up the draft of the boy who was paired with me for that final class. And as I read, I think about how tickled my professor was that he managed to match up the two kids who decided to write about depressive illness before even knowing our names. As I read, I remember realizing how similar our stories were, and thinking that my story, my craft matched up to his, better even. As I read, I remember his face and his clothes and his hair and how he has the same name as the boy I was dating. As I read, I remember the girl who wrote about a nose job telling me after class that she liked mine better. She was wrong. She was lying. Because this, this was the masterpiece. This was the writing that won that competition. The writing that makes you feel. The writing that you cannot stop reading. For the same amount of words, he says so, so much more. And it wouldn’t have mattered if it wasn’t assigned. I would’ve read it all anyway. And now as I read, I do not envy his life, but I lie here paralyzed with awe and jealousy for his mind. Because this is the kind of writing you cannot learn. The kind of voice you cannot will into existence. It is whole and clear and rich. Structured, but smooth. Ten pages feel like fifty but read like five and it is everything that I want to be able to do but know I never can. Maybe I just haven’t suffered enough. Maybe I just wasn’t meant for this. And as I read, I wonder how he’s doing now. A part of me wishes he’s written more, but more of me hopes, for his sake mostly, that he no longer can.

Sometimes when I reminisce about the only class I’d gotten full attendance for in college, it makes me think about DI in high school speech and debate. Now that was truly a competition in tragedy. After all, if you can make the room cry with a ten minute story, if you can make yourself cry with a performance you do at least six times every weekend, how can you not win? I used to scour memoirs, plays, old videos for stories that could help me place. Racial injustice tops cancer tops parent’s death tops schizophrenia. Usually. But if the character was likable, if your cut had a proper climax, if the writing was good, and if you could mime like a French busker desperate for lunch, it didn’t always matter. I guess it was the same for this class. Not all of the stories were dripping with misery. In fact there was one written about a grandmother and her art that I liked quite a bit. And the one about a shooting was one I didn’t like at all. Somewhere in the lines of the first page, in the craft of the structure, in the voice of the author, in everything not written, at some point my brain decided to care about one and not the other. Sometimes I go back to these drafts to try and figure out what it is. I never can.

After all, isn’t this why I struggle with the app dating? Because nobody knows you. And you don’t know them either. So how do you get yourself to care? They’re all books you start to read and then put back down forever, old hobbies that collect dust in the back corner of your closet, compositions unfinished that you don’t even remember once existed. And there are a million reasons why, but there’s never one good enough to justify tossing them aside. Even less for when they toss you aside. Anything you think of reflects on you instead, shallow thoughts and a tired, busy life that really isn’t all that busy. Four texts and you’re sick of the small talk so you don’t talk at all. Four pictures and you decide that he’s the one so you check your phone every half hour for a message back. There are none so you turn off notifications to try and focus on other things. This backfires and you end up checking the app more often instead. This school isn’t good enough. This job isn’t cool enough. This one has a beard. This one is too wide. But what if they’re everything else you’re looking for? What if your reasons really are as trivial as you think? So you screw up the algorithm that you’re not even sure works and run the phrase what if over in your mind until it has no meaning and the boys are not real people. You feel guilty about the ones you’ve ignored. You feel sad about the ones who have ignored you. You wonder about why you care about some and not others, but you can’t manage to come up with an answer that satisfies you. You tell yourself that it’s not just the looks, or the school, or the job, which it definitely is, but it’s not all of it. This inevitably leads you to thinking about why anyone would care about you. You beg yourself to stop asking questions that don’t have answers but once you’ve started you cannot stop. Why do they care? Why did they care? Why should they care?

You say that if they just got to know you more, they would like you. You want them to grant you the courtesy you do not extend to others. You do this in spite of knowing from experience that the more they get to know you, the more reasons they’ll have to walk away. And those reasons will be more valid than you can face. Maybe it’s better this way, to stay a set a pictures and one-worded prompts. There is no blame to go around if you were never real. They cannot hurt you if they were never real. You resign yourself to feeling lonely and think that you should be used to this, you grew up an only child. But that’s why you need this all the more, and your imaginary future stings back just as hard as any real boy could. You don’t know how to date anymore because it’s not about the dating anymore. You just want to feel like you are worth caring about. And you want to ask them all why and get the answer that will make it all make sense. That will make you feel whole and make them whole too. That will make you want to play music again, make you want to go outside again, feel like the person you were before you got depressed again.

A few weeks ago I sent an email to my professor because it was one of those days where getting up wasn’t so hard and I didn’t mind sitting by the window where I’d be reminded of the world I’m not a part of. I was feeling self-important and desperate to imbue the emptiness I’d felt days before with value. I typed out my question of what makes someone care five times and deleted it five times. He doesn’t have the answer. No one does. And when I realize that it’s a question not worth asking him, it stops haunting me too. I read his response to my hot mess of an email, glad that I was doing better, asking if I still play violin, hoping that we can keep in touch. I hadn’t been forgotten. Just because he is not here does not mean that he is gone for good. It no longer mattered to me why he cares, just that he does. So many people do.

Stuart didn’t die the quarter that I took this class. He died the quarter before, when I had to walk to the same building and sit in the same classroom for a poetry class instead. The flowers and the candles and the pictures were only there for a few weeks. I don’t know why I remember them as having been there for months. It wasn’t always raining. I wasn’t always late. And I didn’t really know him but I think of him anyway. Why? Because for a year I’d see his face around in the hallway. And I still recognize his name, even if it’s someone else introducing themselves, it is still his name. And I still remember his memorial even if I remember it all wrong. He did what I never managed to try. He existed and that was enough. I exist now. One day I’ll realize that that’s enough too.