"Your New Life Letter"
Your New Life Letter
The Name: TIARA LESKOWITZ
Your Message:
You are off to school today. I will miss you. I love you so much. I miss you so much when you are off to school for the day. I will be waiting for you when you come home. I will be on a lawn chair in the driveway waiting for the bus to drop you off. Every day I am so happy to see you come home and tell me what you learned. I hope everybody treats you with love and respect.
Love you forever NO MATTER WHAT.
MOMMY
"Game room Transcript"
14:58, [Player walks into picture, encounters room]
"Hi there. Sorry for pulling you out of class.
I know you've been busy catching up.
Don't worry, I just want to talk with you.
Hey, do you want to play a game? You can pick any game you want, and we can play it together."
"Graverobber is kind of like Battleship.
Oh, you already know Graverobber? That's good. I don't like explaining things."
18:32
"Are you right handed, or left handed?
You don't know? Really? Well, which hand do you write with?
That one? That's your left hand. That means you're left handed.
I'm right handed. I use this hand.
My right is actually your left. Isn't that confusing?
Anyway, your turn."
21:02
"Kids shouldn't say swear words. Do you know why?
It just doesn't sound right. It's disturbing.
You should choose cleaner words, even when you're really angry.
Your turn."
22:20
"That's a very big boo-boo on your face.
We're going to help you, together. Everyone is.
When you reach for your shoes, your shoes will be there.
When you walk through a doorway, the door will be open.
Where you go, the floor will continue under your feet.
Every move you make, will be made valid.
Everything you see will become real.
Everything you say will become the truth.
Your turn."
I am in a classroom.
This classroom is not inside a normal school building. Instead, it's inside some kind of decently large apartment.
There is no class going on. Instead, there just seems to be an atmosphere of a relaxing boredom bordering on lethargy.
Everyone is strewn about, either multiple people huddling around or on somebody's desk, just chatting amongst themselves, or hunched over their desks taking a nap or fanning themselves.
Periodically I get up and walk into a room across the hallway.
In this room I rummage through a box. I struggle my arms through a random assortment of junk, namely things like a single loose bicylce tire and a license plate.
I do not find what I was looking for, and return to my seat.
Periodically I get up and walk into a room across the hallway.
I continue to search through the boxes. I do not find what I was looking for.
Frustrated, I return to my seat.
Periodically, I return to the room across the hallway.
I keep struggling my way through the various, largely pointless contents of the cartons.
I do not find what I am looking for.
While still not sure of what it is that I am looking for exactly, whatever subconscious of my dream self drove me to search for it in this room turned mere frustration into a deeply personal desperation.
I need this. I deeply need this. It is not an item of luxury. It is not an item of convenience. It is not an item of temporary, circumstantial usefulness.
It is an item of deep, personal significance.
You do not understand. I will die if I don't find this thing
I will die if I find this thing
If I don't find it I'm afraid I'll explode, I will crack open and I'll leak out and cover the walls and the bicycle wheel and the license plate
If I find it I will quietly crumble into myself and maybe somebody will come into the room and place a flower into a pile of dust saying
"Here she wasn't. Here she never has been"
I do not leave the room. I merely take a few moments to catch my breath and return to the boxes.
Digging my way through more miscellaneous junk, I grab hold of what I thought I was looking for.
I pull out a piece of paper.
It is folded into many sides and squares, all which I unravel into one page covered in a cartoon
I am a small little figurie on the page, somewhere between a stickman figure and a Peanuts character
I go around town, I walk across the page
I greet my friends
I greet my elders
I greet the postman
I greet the animals
I greet the world
I am a happy little child ready to accept the world and have it accept me into it
This is proof that my parents had plans for me
This is proof that somebody out there, whoever drew this had hopes for me
They thought I could've been something nice
They thought I could've been something good
They thought I could've had something good in me, I used to have something good in me, I could've been something good
I can't breathe and I tear up and I crumble and fall apart and I wake up
Sometime around 2012 my family and I move from Hannover to Bremen, which is the last city in germany where we'd live before we returned to our home country.
At the new school in this new town I feel welcomed and like I get along with almost everyone here for the first time since first grade.
Eventually I'm told about this kid who I think I remember was named Fridolin.
He had moved away shortly before I moved into town.
I would hear stories of this person, probably more rose tinted in the decade since I was first told them than they actually were but you would imagine this almost fairy-tale like figure who could only ever exist in everybody's collective summernight fever dream conscious
Memories of daydreams of this strange little sensitive figurine, in tune with nature and animals and the arts and laughter and what-not
And was I there to replace him?
I had been told so many times after that that I would've been great friends with Fridolin had we known each other
I guess that's the point, though
Maybe two of us would've been too much
By the end of elementary school I had managed to keep most of my friendships intact, until the afternoon of the very last day where my friend and I would split paths for good after he had used the combination of my bike lock that I had trusted him with in confidence to take it for a joyride.
I wasn't upset at him though. I would've understood. I want to believe I would've understood.
I was upset at my parents. I was upset that they were upset at my friend. I was upset that they wouldn't trust my friend. I was upset that they wouldn't trust me.
I'm upset that I let myself be intimidated. That I let myself be turned against my friend.
I'm upset that more than 10 years later I miss him and that the only thing I regret more than the way I treated him on that last day is not following what I truly felt.
I'm upset at the notion that our falling out proves some kind of flaw in me. That every time I let him down, every awkward interaction where it felt like we didn't really get along that well at all, that it was proof that I was just some kind of surface-level-sensitive coward-on-the-inside, that I could never really live up to the ideal of that kid who was lost with both feet on the ground and yet fell in love with earth as if he had his vision set towards somewhere deep in the stars
And everyone would lament about how similar we seemed and how well we'd get along but knowing that if we were to meet I could only ever see all the things I find ugly about myself remaining on me
And maybe I tell myself that it's some kind of law of the universe that two dreamers should only ever meet in re-re-reflections recounted in stories of their friends told to each other
And even the idea of the universe trying to protect me by keeping us apart seems like I'm giving myself too much credit and putting too much value on who I think I am
And I feel some kind of paranoia about what would happen if we ever met, I think I was scared that I would lose my head, I think I would try to end him, I think I would walk up to him with a dagger and the ground would fail me, my feet would fail me, the world would swallow me whole, and no one would ever know anything had ever happened