Dearest Rachel –
According to the piped-in music I occasionally will notice while I’m at the gym, “everybody’s working for the weekend” except for me these days. Look, I get it; I remember the days when those two days away from the office – particularly the one in which I had no commitments but to you and Daniel – were what I lived for. The other five days were mere existence between them – a means to and end, to allow me to afford the other two, in terms of time as well as money. Which didn’t always happen, either; you’ll recall plenty of mornings in which you woke to my phone call from the office, telling you I was on the way home, and would you and Daniel like for me to pick something up from McDonald’s? The “usual,” in fact?
A lot has changed since then, honey. Apart from the occasional McRib, I haven’t bothered much with the place since your departure. It doesn’t help that Daniel wants nothing to do with the place; too many memories that he doesn’t want to recall, I think. And as for his old “usual,” well, they don’t even make mochas anymore. Besides, his new smoothie routine, while larger in terms of quantity, is probably healthier for him anyway (and it’s not as if he needs the caffeination like I do.
And yes, I need something extra to get started on Saturday morning. It was one thing when, later on, after I had been forbidden from showing up at the office to get certain things cleared over the weekend (it wasn’t personally directed at me, it was more a matter of security for the office itself – at least, that’s what I’d been told. Not sure how an unauthorized individual could get in and mess around without a magnetic key card and without being seen by the battery of security cameras installed by then, but whatever), and the one thing I could start my day with was you – at least, once you woke up. These days, like you back then, I wake up organically, rather than relying on an alarm clock, except on weekends; then, since I have to be somewhere at a certain time, I either have to go back to that artificial means of waking up, or call it quits that much earlier the night before.
That latter basically describes the past week for me – which, if you’ve been keeping an eye on me like I regularly ask, you would already know. By nine o’clock, it’s already gone dark in here, and while I can still hear what the boys are watching, I’m trying to stay out of their way (it’s not as if I’m completely uninterested in the various anime series they might be going through – although the fact that they were rewatching old episodes of Pokémon, of all things, disinterested me more than most – it’s just not my place to interfere with their fun). At a certain point, it’s more a matter of boredom than actual tiredness, but given that I have to get up (and also, spend an hour or so filling you in like this), I generally decide to call it a night and roll into bed.
Apparently, this concerns certain people. To them, it looks as if I’ve given up the fight, whatever that might be. And to be sure, I haven’t made much of an effort to really seek out ‘Megumi’ lately; while I can talk freely to certain people when it’s obvious there’s no chance of progress, the moment either of us sees a possibility of more (and that’s usually me), I either wind up getting tongue-tied and unable to proceed, or I start weighing the costs on my autonomy and deciding it’s not worth it to move forward after all. After all, when are the best times to go out on a date? The very hours I really ought to be sleeping in order to wake up the next morning to be where I need to be.
This is why I passed up an invitation to an event supposedly attended by a group of older singles last night; I didn’t know how late it was going to go, and just didn’t think I had the energy for it. To be sure, I’m not sure I would have been interested in the movie, either, but if that were the reason, I’d never leave the house again, as there are plenty of things I go to where it’s not as interesting as what I could find around the house, apart from the long-term social possibilities. As much as I might disapprove of it, I understand Daniel’s hikikomori tendencies, and respect them as an honest reaction to the world around him; I sometimes wish I could be like that as well.
As it is, I’ve made a promise to myself and the one who invited me that ‘next time,’ I will go, whether or not I’m “feeling it.” And as you might guess, one of the reasons I’m telling you this is so you can hold me to this. Not that it’s of any concern to you as to what I do, where I go, and whether I find ‘Megumi,’ but as long as I’ve made a promise, I ought to be held accountable to someone about it, and who better than the one who used to be my external conscience back in the day?
So with that being said, here I am, making unofficial plans, and asking you to remind me as you keep your eye on me and wish me luck. I’m going to need all of it going forward, I shouldn’t wonder.
Letters to Rachel 