There is a 98% chance that you are not the reader this is intended for. From this statement you can deduce a variety of things. For one, that my paltry words, scribbled in this mangy journal, are going to be read by a very small subset of people. More importantly, there is only one person for whom I have scribbled them. Most importantly, I am almost certain that you are not him.
Let’s see, then. That would have to mean that if there is one reader, then there will be forty-nine people reading this who aren’t him. That’s fairly nasty odds, I think, though pretty good that all those people are reading this right now. Are you one of the forty-nine? How did you stumble across this tattered book, then?
If you are he, then here is the message I wanted to send to you. You, my 2% chance, my uneven odds. You used to tell me what you learned in school. Do you remember that? You would march into the kitchen and announce, “i is an imaginary number!” Can you believe that? You were ten years old and learning about imaginary numbers. Though, I suppose, you always did live more in your head than you did anywhere else.
When you left I stayed in the house for days. Weeks, probably. I became a sullen shadow until your father threw up his hands in disgust and walked out too. Don’t worry, baby, he was back eventually. I know you didn’t mean it. I shouldn’t have shouted at you. Sometimes when I close my eyes I can still hear the sharp sound of my own voice, can still see the round shapes of your eyes because you were afraid of me. Perhaps you close your eyes and hear it too. I hope not. You’re seventeen now, your birthday was two weeks ago. Did you celebrate with anyone? Did you have cake? I would have made you a cake, you know. You would have said it was silly and rolled your eyes and huffed your breath out like any seventeen-year-old, and I would have waited until your back was turned to roll my eyes too at your antics. Instead, I curled up in the bedroom while your father reorganized the kitchen. He clanged pots and pans to such a cacophony that he didn’t hear me, even when I called.
It’s been months since you’ve been gone. If you’re reading this, maybe you’re back. I probably won’t show it to you when you get back, though. I’m going to start keeping up some kind of journal because Dr. Bachman told me to try it. She said it would help. I don’t think it will, most likely. Yesterday the phone rang and I knew it was you. Nobody spoke on the line. There wasn’t even breathing audible, but I knew. It had to be you. Didn’t it?
You are supposed to be old enough for empathy. I read something about the stages of children’s development once. Around nine or ten, children move past the egocentric stage, that solipsistic phase when they think that it is impossible to be anyone but themselves. I used to joke that they also develop self-awareness around then, and as teenagers become so self-aware that they forget about everyone else all over again. You, though, at seventeen. You should know better. You are supposed to have the kind of sympathy for other people’s pain that means that you are just not supposed to do this kind of shit. You should know better, and you don’t. I guess I’m kind of angry that you don’t care, or that you don’t care enough to do anything about it.
I know that’s not fair. Probably you tried to come back, but you can’t afford the bus ticket. Or you’re, I don’t know, the hostage of a psychopath in some basement somewhere. You can’t understand how I worry, how it eats at me. You’re not supposed to. Somewhere I didn’t do my job right. I didn’t teach you to care how I felt, and I didn’t make sure you’d be safe, and I didn’t make you feel loved enough that you wanted to stay home with me.
There is a 2% chance that if you’re reading this, I’m talking to you. I’m not sure if I’m giving myself good odds or bad ones with that. Maybe the chance is slimmer than that. I don’t know. I can’t know. I hope you come home and you never have to read this, because I’m sure you’ve had plenty of your own grief to hold. I’m going to go now, I’ll write more tomorrow. My hand is cramping, and I think I hear someone at the door.
all the in between 