March 17, 2026

A Letter to Not-Her

You're reading this right now? You're reading this thing that is so much about her I can hardly stomach it? You're reading this thing, which is a compilation of things I want to tell her but was too nervous to tell her? I wrote a post about being unclockable and then decided to tell my best friend about it instead. I wrote her directly. I sent a discord message. I asked for her opinion directly. That's what real people do. Sometimes I wonder if this entire blog is for Her. Like, what if everything I ever said in this blog was something I wrote to her.

The me that [REDACTED] knows is not the me that [REDACTED] knows. This is normal and good actually. I think I'm going to be a failed novelist. I think I'm going to be a successful novelist with a disreputable publisher. I think I'm going to be the "first great american novelist." I'm going to stop pathologizing everything I do. I'm not an alcoholic drunkard, I like to have a bit of booze now and then. I'm not a pedophile, I love a younger woman, but she's still a woman. I'm not a disaster, and I won't say that. It's time I got back to the good life.

I shared with all of you at the bar: the [REDACTED], the [REDACTED], the [REDACTED], and even the [REDACTED]; I shared with you the blog containing my soul. I shared with you my thoughts of the past year, laid bare before your eyes for you to judge, internalize, and understand. I presented to you my thoughts in their most vulgar form. I presented to you all my thoughts in a form most unrefined, in a way that was disgustingly personal. I shared with you a fantasy of what I thought was openness, something I've never understood because I've only been intimate with two people, both of whom are obvious to any readers of this.

You'll never know her name. You'll never know exactly how much she meant to me, how much she continues to mean to me. You'll never know anything about me until I make my magnum opus, a work dedicated to the things she's taught me, a work that is so lunar perhaps it becomes solar, a work that demonstrates my growth in such agonizing detail you can feel the pain in your bones as you grow alongside me.