Thursday, August 11, 2011

notes for essay

I write these messages to strangers on dating sites at two-thirty in the morning, half-drunk with exhaustion, and half-drunk with drink, giddy and hopeful. I write them when I wake up, and in the minutes before work or class. I mull them over for hours or days, typing and retyping the same sentence. I write them without thinking at all, almost on accident, I trip and they fall out of my hands.

Between April 15, 2009, and August 9, 2011, I have written 108 messages.

I write them to far away people I never expect to meet, and people in town who I want very much to meet. Sometimes, when I spend a lot of time thinking about a message, I begin to feel as if we've already met. I get along so well with the person I imagine that I can't quite believe that they wouldn't write back. After all, we're such good friends--or we will be, I know it.

Every message is an imagined future, the beginning of a story that could happen.

No comments: