TM-challenge: Letter
Another year, another unanswerable challenge. Sorry, kids, this one's just between me and me.
Meanwhile, I'm starting back to college on Monday. Any tips?
*private*
Write a letter to anyone about anything. Say what you have always wanted to say but have been afraid.
Dear Mom,
I don't know if you remember, back in ninth grade -- when we still lived in L.A., and everything was totally insanely normal, although of I didn't think it was, because I didn't know what I would have to compare it to -- Ms. Murdoch, the guidance counselor, asked me to write a letter to myself to be opened on my first day of college. Of course, I couldn't think of anything, because if I could have, they wouldn't be sending to the guidance counselor every week due to my inability to focus on long-term tasks. Anyway, of course, I just screamed and whined and bitched about it, until you sat down with me at the kitchen table, and we wrote it out "together," which really meant you did it for me and I sometimes nodded along. But, you know, it didn't really feel like that. You had this way you could make me feel like we were working together, even when I knew I wasn't.
I don't know what was in it. Probably all that Use sunscreen type of advice that it turned out Kurt Vonnegut didn't really write. I'm sure it was good advice, though not the type that would have been most useful to me (stab with the right, guard with the left; steer clear of memory spells; don't enter into love affairs with the undead or immortal unless you have a realy high tolerance for unnecessary drama). But then, you couldn't have expected that. I didn't.
Anyway, I -- I mean you -- got an 'A' on the assignment, and I didn't have to go the counselor anymore. I kept the letter, but I don't know what I did with it. By the time I actually went to college, I had totally forgotten it existed, and wouldn't have bothered to read it anyway. I didn't really think about it again until. . .well, you know. Or I guess you don't. I guess that's the point. I feel like I ought to be able to end this story with, "Last week, I opened up my old yearbook from Hemery and lo and behold --" But, obviously, not. I didn't take much when I finally got out of Sunnydale, and yearbooks from schools that expelled me certainly weren't high on the list.
I guess the reason I'm thinking about all this today is that I'm getting ready to start college -- again -- for what I hope is the last time. And I could use some good sound advice from just about anywhere at this point. Dad is trying and Trish is REALLY trying. I spent a few weeks with them around Thanksgiving, and I expected to spend them being really pissed off but. . .I couldn't even find the energy. Apparently, I've only got room for so much anger and resentment and pissed-offedness, and I guess I need to save it for things that are trying to kill me. It's kind of liberating to find out I don't hate him. I always tried not to think about, because I was afraid I'd find out that I did. Besides, you didn't ever hate him; at least you never showed it. You never tried to pass it on to me, and I guess if anybody had a right. . .
I don't want to waste anymore of this letter talking about him, though. I'm supposed to be using it to say the things we never got to say to each other, so I keep going back in my mind about that night, before I walked out the door, and how I think we should have had all these things to say to each other. Or at least, you know, exchanged looks of great significance. Like in the movies when a character walks out of a room, and he takes a hard look at his wife or his partner or his son, and you just know they're never going to see other again. It wasn't like that, I didn't even say good-bye. You'd been on a date, and even though you'd been sick, I wanted to believe you were better. So I just slipped out -- and before that, the last thing you told me was that you left your bra on the dessert cart at the restaurant, and I ran up the stairs with my hands on my ears screaming because I didn't want to know. And even though I was worried about Warren Meers and his stupid lovebot raining destruction on Sunnydale, it was the happiest I remember being since Riley left. Since you got sick. That must be why I didn't bother to say good-bye when I went out that night. My last memory was a good one, and I didn't want to risk ruining it.
And if I had talked to you, I might have gotten annoyed or said something awful, or you might have started rambling and I would have gotten worried. And maybe I would have gotten so worried I decided to stay in that night -- because, honestly, on the scale of all the threats to Sunnydale we ever faced, Stepford April wasn't exactly high on the totem pole. Maybe I could have called the paramedics in time. Heck, maybe Warren would have figured out how to deal with April himself, and he wouldn't have decided he hated me and spent the next year trying to ruin my life, and he wouldn't have shot me or Tara and Willow wouldn't. . .
Oh, dammit, Mom, I'm sorry. You don't even know what I'm talking about, and I probably worried you. Yeah, I got shot but I'm fine. Tara's back, and I guess Willow's fine, and even Warren's fine although I think he cheats at pool, if that's even possible. And playing this game just makes me crazy, and the thing is, if that blood vessel was going to go, it was going to go, and maybe it's just as well it happened when it did, before we had to steal a Winnebago and run away from a crazy hellgod -- no, seriously, I'm fine!
My point is, we can't really predict how one event would affect any other; even when there are prophecies, it seems like we're always reading them wrong. So it's no good saying 'what if?' because everybody says good-bye, eventually. Sometimes we get to pick how and when it happens, but not very often. So when I think about it, there could have been a lot worse ways for us to say good bye.
And, oh! I'm applying for a job as a guard at an art museum! Remember all those afternoons I didn't want to help you at the gallery? Life's funny like that. Plus, I totally know what to look for with haunted artifacts and mummies and stuff, so I can stop them before they do too much damage. Just kidding. I hope.
Don't worry!
Love,
Buffy
Meanwhile, I'm starting back to college on Monday. Any tips?
*private*
Write a letter to anyone about anything. Say what you have always wanted to say but have been afraid.
Dear Mom,
I don't know if you remember, back in ninth grade -- when we still lived in L.A., and everything was totally insanely normal, although of I didn't think it was, because I didn't know what I would have to compare it to -- Ms. Murdoch, the guidance counselor, asked me to write a letter to myself to be opened on my first day of college. Of course, I couldn't think of anything, because if I could have, they wouldn't be sending to the guidance counselor every week due to my inability to focus on long-term tasks. Anyway, of course, I just screamed and whined and bitched about it, until you sat down with me at the kitchen table, and we wrote it out "together," which really meant you did it for me and I sometimes nodded along. But, you know, it didn't really feel like that. You had this way you could make me feel like we were working together, even when I knew I wasn't.
I don't know what was in it. Probably all that Use sunscreen type of advice that it turned out Kurt Vonnegut didn't really write. I'm sure it was good advice, though not the type that would have been most useful to me (stab with the right, guard with the left; steer clear of memory spells; don't enter into love affairs with the undead or immortal unless you have a realy high tolerance for unnecessary drama). But then, you couldn't have expected that. I didn't.
Anyway, I -- I mean you -- got an 'A' on the assignment, and I didn't have to go the counselor anymore. I kept the letter, but I don't know what I did with it. By the time I actually went to college, I had totally forgotten it existed, and wouldn't have bothered to read it anyway. I didn't really think about it again until. . .well, you know. Or I guess you don't. I guess that's the point. I feel like I ought to be able to end this story with, "Last week, I opened up my old yearbook from Hemery and lo and behold --" But, obviously, not. I didn't take much when I finally got out of Sunnydale, and yearbooks from schools that expelled me certainly weren't high on the list.
I guess the reason I'm thinking about all this today is that I'm getting ready to start college -- again -- for what I hope is the last time. And I could use some good sound advice from just about anywhere at this point. Dad is trying and Trish is REALLY trying. I spent a few weeks with them around Thanksgiving, and I expected to spend them being really pissed off but. . .I couldn't even find the energy. Apparently, I've only got room for so much anger and resentment and pissed-offedness, and I guess I need to save it for things that are trying to kill me. It's kind of liberating to find out I don't hate him. I always tried not to think about, because I was afraid I'd find out that I did. Besides, you didn't ever hate him; at least you never showed it. You never tried to pass it on to me, and I guess if anybody had a right. . .
I don't want to waste anymore of this letter talking about him, though. I'm supposed to be using it to say the things we never got to say to each other, so I keep going back in my mind about that night, before I walked out the door, and how I think we should have had all these things to say to each other. Or at least, you know, exchanged looks of great significance. Like in the movies when a character walks out of a room, and he takes a hard look at his wife or his partner or his son, and you just know they're never going to see other again. It wasn't like that, I didn't even say good-bye. You'd been on a date, and even though you'd been sick, I wanted to believe you were better. So I just slipped out -- and before that, the last thing you told me was that you left your bra on the dessert cart at the restaurant, and I ran up the stairs with my hands on my ears screaming because I didn't want to know. And even though I was worried about Warren Meers and his stupid lovebot raining destruction on Sunnydale, it was the happiest I remember being since Riley left. Since you got sick. That must be why I didn't bother to say good-bye when I went out that night. My last memory was a good one, and I didn't want to risk ruining it.
And if I had talked to you, I might have gotten annoyed or said something awful, or you might have started rambling and I would have gotten worried. And maybe I would have gotten so worried I decided to stay in that night -- because, honestly, on the scale of all the threats to Sunnydale we ever faced, Stepford April wasn't exactly high on the totem pole. Maybe I could have called the paramedics in time. Heck, maybe Warren would have figured out how to deal with April himself, and he wouldn't have decided he hated me and spent the next year trying to ruin my life, and he wouldn't have shot me or Tara and Willow wouldn't. . .
Oh, dammit, Mom, I'm sorry. You don't even know what I'm talking about, and I probably worried you. Yeah, I got shot but I'm fine. Tara's back, and I guess Willow's fine, and even Warren's fine although I think he cheats at pool, if that's even possible. And playing this game just makes me crazy, and the thing is, if that blood vessel was going to go, it was going to go, and maybe it's just as well it happened when it did, before we had to steal a Winnebago and run away from a crazy hellgod -- no, seriously, I'm fine!
My point is, we can't really predict how one event would affect any other; even when there are prophecies, it seems like we're always reading them wrong. So it's no good saying 'what if?' because everybody says good-bye, eventually. Sometimes we get to pick how and when it happens, but not very often. So when I think about it, there could have been a lot worse ways for us to say good bye.
And, oh! I'm applying for a job as a guard at an art museum! Remember all those afternoons I didn't want to help you at the gallery? Life's funny like that. Plus, I totally know what to look for with haunted artifacts and mummies and stuff, so I can stop them before they do too much damage. Just kidding. I hope.
Don't worry!
Love,
Buffy