You're doing the harder thing

In the process of getting ready to move out, I must have been crying too hard and blurred my vision, because I accidentally packed all of my underwear. Luckily, I remembered I had an emergency pair tucked away under the bathroom sink in case I’m having company over and have explosive diarrhea or something. Of course, the underwear was neon pink, and therefore unwearable under my white grad dress. So, I ended up graduating college commando.

My father handed me flowers and my sister handed me a card that said, “Congrats on the Unemployment!”. We got in the car to go to dinner.

That night as I lay staring at the ceiling of my apartment for the last night ever, I got a phone call. It was Marky, who is a guy who’s had my phone number for the last three years but has never needed to use it. Marky and I both wrote for the underground student magazine, name of which I cannot disclose. I promised not to during the initiation, and then again at the initiation afterparty where I, sloppily drunk, aggressively hugged the Editor in Chief on a scabbed college couch and swore on my life. Marky was the Managing Editor and I was Head Editor, a step under him. We communicated mostly through email chains, and I completed my tasks on time and proficiently, and therefore, Marky and I managed to successfully produce an acclaimed publication without ever speaking a single word to each other. He didn’t come to any of the staff parties or bonding events. He sat upright and stoic at the meetings, and we made eye contact maybe a total of five times whenever I would by-chance walk past him working in the computer lab, pencil pressed to his bottom lip.

Now I was spread out starfish-style in a big sleep shirt with a faded Hello Kitty on it and Marky was calling me.

“Hello?”

“Is this Anna?”

“Yes.”

“It’s Marky.”

“I know.”

…

“I wanted to call to say goodbye. I’m standing on a bridge.”

“Oh my god!”

“Sorry, I don’t mean–I’m not going to jump off the bridge, I’m just standing on it. Also, if I did jump, I wouldn’t die. It’s a wooden bridge over a tiny creek.”

“Oh. Good.”

“I was on a walk in the woods and I stopped on the bridge to call and say goodbye. Actually, it would really be better if you came here so I could say it in person. Do you mind?”

I wasn’t going to be able to fall asleep for another couple hours anyway. I told Marky I’d be there. I didn’t ask for directions even though I had no idea where the bridge was. I vaguely knew where the woods were. I had avoided them for the last four years though– my favorite book was about a guy getting pushed off a ravine in the woods.

I pulled on my emergency underwear and Birkenstocks.

---

I approached Marky, his tall figure illuminated by moonlight. He stood with his arms crossed and resting on the rail of the bridge, looking out over the creek, but turned to me when I got close enough to be noticed. I waved. He did not wave back.

“What took you so long?”

“I didn’t know where to go. I’ve never been here before.”

He resumed his contemplative position. I joined. We stood in silence and listened to the wind and to the buzzing of cicadas. It would be a hot and wet-bodied summer, and we would not have to buy new notebooks at the end of it.

Marky spoke without turning to me, the sound of his voice disrupting the trance we were in, “I’ve always admired your work ethic and ability to follow instructions.”

“Thank you. Is that why you wanted to say goodbye to me?”

“I wanted to show some solidarity. I wanted to make sure that you knew that I am also scared.”

“Scared?”

“I read the piece you wrote for the last issue. You’re very scared to be graduating.”

The “piece” he was referring to was a satirical review of bathrooms on campus titled the “Loo Review”. It was structured like a Buzzfeed list (one of my earliest creative influences).

“It was so sentimental. You write about the bathrooms like it’s a eulogy for an old friend. Like you’re afraid to never see them again.”

“Well I probably won’t!”

“Anna, I am also afraid. I think I have peaked in my career. I don’t think I will ever be as high up in a chain of command as I was for the magazine. The reality is, I am a power-hungry person but too shy to ask for what I want,” he turned to look at me.

This, I thought, was him asking me for what he wanted, so I readied my tongue and leaned forward, only to be swatted away like a July mosquito.

“Yo!”

My face turned the color of my emergency underwear. “I’m so sorry. I completely misread that.”

“As a head editor, I would think you’d be better at reading things.”

We laughed. I was grateful to him for mopping up the awkwardness I’d just barfed all over the moment we were sharing.

“So what are you going to do?” I asked.

“There’s nothing I can do. It’s my nature. I’m doomed for a life of mediocrity. What are you going to do?”

I didn’t know. I was going to go home and live with my parents until something someday happened.

“I’m going to write,” I said. As I said it, I imagined jumping off the bridge and drowning in the four inches of water.