The following is a guest post
Author: Anonymous
I would talk about how even though you transplanted yourself to a foreign country immediately following your expulsion into the real world from the cozy womb that is college, the heavy, existential sludge that occupies most of your mind space during senior year still plagued you when you first showed up on the other side of the globe. Or maybe something a little lighter.
You should talk about how much you enjoyed thinking about James eating his Moo Shoo Pork Combination Plate alone under the fluorescent light, peeling metallic wallpaper, and sticky tile floors seem to characterize most American Chinese Restaurants. Tell him that it made you sad in a really comforting way. Tell him you have a feeling he will know what you mean by that.
Tell him how much your face hurt during your first few weeks in Thailand because daily communication for you now includes some mild facial acrobatics. Say that when you return you suspect you might make a really fantastic mime, something you have been considering perfecting in case you decide to join the circus later. A really appealing option honestly, at this point anyway.
Tell him how much you and I and Mark and Chris and Lindsay talk about how we wanted to reverse time so badly back to our senior year. Tell him to enjoy it, even though you think it’s impossible to really appreciate that special blend of Freedom until it dissolves. You know this because you feel it less and less everyday. You wake up one morning and that warm spot in your bed is cold, it slipped out the back door before you really got to say good bye.
Tell him not to waste his time trying to make plans. They just lead to elaborate and unrealistic day dreams that ultimately result in inevitable disappointment. Tell him that you heard somewhere that our generation has been groomed for a perfect storm of disappointment. We were brought up with the highest expectations for ourselves, encouraged to believe that anything was possible or achievable, that hard work meant certain success and then…. the world we were brought up in fell into chaos, reordered itself into some new complex terrain just it came to be our turn to play.
Actually, don’t say any of that. I think you probably figured out pretty early on that the preceding message was mine to you. Go with your original plan for the James message.