No, I’m fine, everything’s fine! — Me — with her! Oh Lord, when You made me, if You’d put that blessing aside for me, my whole life would be one neverending prayer. I — I don’t mean to be ungrateful, forgive me for these tears, forgive me for these stupid wishes! — Her…with me! If I could have taken the most amazing person in the world into my arms — A chill runs down my whole body, Will, when Albert puts his arm around her slender waist…

And, can I say this? Why not, Will? She would have been happier with me than him! Oh, he’s not the man to make all that heart’s dreams come true. A real lack of sensitivity, a lack — however you want to put it: that his heart doesn’t beat sympathetically at — oh! — at a passage in a beloved book, where my heart and Lotte’s line up EXACTLY; in a hundred other cases, when our feelings come out about how someone else was acting…mmm, Will! — But he really does love her with his whole heart, and a love like that…deserves so much!

// a fucking telemarketer interrupted me. My tears have dried. I’m over it. Goodbye, dear friend!

Where am I headed? Okay…but this stays between you and me. I have to stay here another two weeks, and after that I’ve been pretending to myself that I want to go hike the ______tian Trail; but that’s a lie, I just want to be nearer to Lotte, that’s all. Heh. Follow your heart, right?

Damn right, I’m just a wanderer, a seeker roaming through life! What, like you’re not?

Look, I hear what you’re saying, but I can’t keep staying here. What am I supposed to DO here? The days just draaaag onnnn… The consultant’s being as good to me as anyone could, but this isn’t where I’m supposed to be. We just fundamentally don’t have anything in common. He’s a thoughtful person, but all his thoughts are so conventional; I get about as much out of talking to him as I would out of reading a textbook. I’m giving myself another eight days and then I’m heading back out into the Unknown. Sigh. Well, this hasn’t been a total waste of time — I have done a lot of drawing. The Consultant has good taste in art, and it‘d be even better if he weren’t so bogged down in theory and this whole academic/critical vocabulary. It drives me crazy sometimes, when I’m exploring some idea with him about nature or art, grappling with it in a really personal, passionate way, and he thinks he can totally *nail it!* by butting in with some prepackaged gobbledygook.

I had something in mind I didn’t want to tell you about until I’d made it happen…but now since it’s not going anywhere I guess there’s no harm. I wanted to join the army; it’s something I’ve been seriously considering for a long time. Honestly, that’s the main reason I followed the consultant out here, because he’s a vet with a lot of connections. While we were out walking, I shared my plan with him, he shot it down, and I would’ve had to be stubborn to the point of stupid not to listen to his advice.

I went into this visit home like a pilgrim, devout, contemplative… and a lot of big, unexpected feelings hit me there. When my taxi reached the big linden tree about fifteen minutes from Main Street, I had the driver stop and let me out so I could keep going on foot and savor every memory as vividly as possible. And then, there I was, standing under the linden, the exact tree I always walked out to as a kid, that was as far as I was allowed to go from home. What a change! I was so innocent back then…so eager to head out into the unknown world, so sure I’d find all this sustenance and delight out there for my heart, to satisfy the cravings in my soul…and now here I am coming back from that wide world — oh, Will, with so many failed hopes and ruined plans! — I looked out at those hills I used to always dream of climbing. I could sit here for hours and float myself over them, send my soul wandering through the forests and valleys sitting right in front of me, all dappled and beautiful; and then when time was up, it was like pulling teeth to drag me home from that dear place! — I walked farther into town, waving hello to all the little old houses I recognized, feeling grumpy at the new ones and all the other construction going up. But then I turned a corner onto Main Street, and — I was back. I won’t get into details, Will — it would be just as boring on paper as it was powerful in person. I’d decided to stay in a hotel off the green, right by our old house. On my way over, I saw that my old school building, the place I spent so much of my childhood penned up in, had been converted into condos! I remembered all the restlessness, the crying, the brain-dulling/soul-crushing I went through in there… — Every step I took, there was something affecting. It was like a personal Stations of the Cross, moment after moment of religious remembrance and sacred soul-filling emotion… Here’s one more, out of a thousand. I went walking down the river towards this one particular park (this was also a path I used to take all the time) to the spot where we used to get together as kids and skip stones. And I had such a vivid flashback of how I used to stand there and watch the water and send all these strange fantasies chasing after it and try to imagine all the amazing places it was flowing off to, and pretty soon I’d come up against the limits of my imagination, but it just kept going, on and on, until I lost myself completely staring into the invisible distance. — See, Will, that’s how limited and happy people were in ancient times! that’s how childlike their feelings and their poetry were! When Odysseus talks about the measureless sea and the endless earth, it’s so true, human, deep, close, and mystical. Sure, I can say it’s round, and good for me, A+, but what good does that do me? You only need a few handfuls of earth to be happy on, and even less to rest beneath.

I’m at the consultant’s summer house now. It’s nice, he’s really easy to live with — just an honest, straightforward guy. The weirdest people keep coming over whom I can’t really wrap my head around. They don’t…seem like con men? but they don’t exactly feel like honest people, either. Sometimes they do come off honest, but even then I don’t quite trust them. The other thing that bugs me is that he has a tendency to go on and on about things he’s only vaguely heard or read about, and (even worse) to just parrot back whatever angle people have tried to spin for him.

Plus, he values my intellect and my skills more than my heart, which is the one thing I’m actually proud of, the one source of all my strength and bliss and misery. Eh, the stuff I know, anyone can know — but my heart? That’s mine.

I’m heading out tomorrow, and since the place I grew up is only six miles from the consultant’s house, I think I want to stop by and look around again, reminisce about those good old times when all I did was dream and be happy… I want to come in by exactly the route my mom drove out with me after Dad died and she left that dear cozy place to go immure herself in the Big City. Adieu, Will — I’ll keep you posted on my roamings.

I’ve emailed them giving notice and hopefully that’ll all go smoothly. I’m sorry for not checking in with you guys first…I just had to get out of there, and everything you could have told me to make me stay I pretty much know already, so— Hey, let my mom down easy, okay? Tell her I suck at doing right by me, so she shouldn’t feel bad if I suck at doing right by her too. She’s definitely going to be hurt… having this whole route all mapped out for her son, “middle management, here we come”, and instead it’s like, no, hit the brakes, put the car back in the garage! Well—have fun thinking about all this and figuring out all the ways I could/should have stayed; the point is, I’m leaving, and just so you know where I’m headed, there’s a high-powered consultant here, ____, who’s always really liked talking with me; he asked me as soon as he heard what was happening to please crash at his place and take it easy through the spring. They’ll give me all the space I need, he promises, and he and I are on the exact same wavelength, so I’m just going to go for it and stay with him.

Hey. Thanks for both of your letters. I didn’t write back because I was sitting on this draft until I’d officially left the company; I was scared my mom would write to Jim and make everything harder. But it’s over now, I’m out. They were so sad to see me go—the head of HR even wrote me th… hm, I feel like I shouldn’t be telling you this, I’m sure this is hard enough on you guys already. The CFO managed to slip me a $5,000 severance cheque along with a note that moved me to tears, so you can tell my mom I don’t need that money I texted you about after all.

And it just keeps going. Today at work I bumped into B___ in a hallway, I couldn’t keep it in, I had to talk to her, and as soon we found an empty meeting room I told her how hurt I was she was acting so distant all of a sudden. “Oh, Werther,” she said, so heartfelt, “how can you think that’s what this is, I just didn’t know what to do, but I mean, you know me! It’s been killing me, ever since I walked in and saw you there. I saw the whole thing coming, I was this close like a thousand times to telling you. I knew S__ and T___ would rather quit the board than stay in a room with you; I knew the CIO couldn’t afford to burn bridges with them — and now all this drama!” “Wh— what do you mean?” I said, fighting down the panic rising inside me; because everything Aiden had told me the day before went shooting through my veins like boiling water. “I’ve been through so much already…”, she said, starting to cry. I almost totally lost control, I practically collapsed in front of her. “Please, what are you talking about?!” I screamed. The tears started running down her cheeks. I was freaking out. She wiped them away, not even trying to hide them. “You met my aunt…she was there, she’s on the board, and…oh my god, when she saw all that…Werther, last night I got a whole lecture on my relationship with you, and again this morning, and I just had to sit there and listen to you being put down and insulted and I… not even being able to stand up for you…”

Every word she said was like a bullet through my heart. She couldn’t see how much kinder it would have been to keep that all from me… and then she went on about all the other gossip flying around and everyone lapping it up: how people are saying this is karma for my being so stuck up and looking down on everyone, and passing around this Condescending Werther meme… God, Will, hearing all this from her, all in this saaaad sympathetic tone — it broke me, and I’m still raging inside. I wish one of them had the balls to tell it to my face so I could put a knife in him; seeing some blood would help a lot right now. Eugh, the number of times I’ve grabbed a knife, to give this heart a little breathing room… I read an article about this special breed of horses, that when they’re badly overheating and they’re being ridden too hard, instinctually bite open a vein to let in more oxygen. That’s how I feel a lot, like if I just opened a vein I could be free forever…

I have been SO HUMILIATED I can’t stay here. I can’t. I could punch someone! FUCK! there’s no way to make this right, and this is all YOUR fault, all of you who nagged me and prodded me and pushed me into a job that wasn’t ME. Well, here I am! There you go! And before you say I’m twisting things again with my “tendency to exaggerate”, Dear Friend, here’s the story, plain and simple. Just the FACTS.

The CIO, G____, loves me, he’s taken me under his wing, we got that, I’ve told you a billion times. So, yesterday evening, he and I were hanging out at the office, on what happened to be the night of this reception for investors/board members etc., which I’d barely even registered was happening, and which it had never occurred to me we underlings weren’t welcome at. Cool. The CIO and I get takeout, and after we’re done eating we go walking up and down the event hall, we’re talking, after a while the VP of sales shows up and joins the conversation, and eventually the start time for the reception rolls around. And I swear I’m still totally oblivious. Then in comes Mrs. S____, the ultimate 1%-er, with her banker husband, and her doofus daughter all “boho”d up, and as they walk past me they stick their high-class eyes and noses in the air, and since that whole species rubs me wrong way, I wanted to peace right then and was just waiting until the CIO could extricate himself from their moronic small talk, when my friend, that girl B____, came in. Since my heart always lifts a little when I see her, I figured, heck, I’ll stay, I went and hung around behind her chair, and I noticed after a while that she was being a lot less open than usual and kind of awkward towards me. That struck me. IS she just like the others, after all? I wondered, and that hurt, and made me want to leave, but I stayed, because I wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt, and I couldn’t believe it, and I kept hoping a switch would flip and she’d be nice again, and — whatever. Meanwhile, the crowd was filling in. Deputy Mayor F_____, in the same horrendous suit he’s been wearing since 1970, our event planner, R__ — excuse me, Chief Happiness Engineer, R__ — with his deaf wife, etc., and let’s not forget J___, the walking fashion crime, thinking his Kanye glasses will make up for his 80’s shoulderpads, they’re all piling in, and I’m talking with a few of the people I know from the company, who are all veeery short with me. I thought…okay, and just focused on B____. I didn’t notice that the women at the end of the room were whispering to each other, that it was filtering through the men, that Mrs. S____ was talking to the CIO (this is all stuff B____ told me later), until finally the CIO came over to me and walked me over to a window. “You know our friendship is a bit of an unusual thing,” he said, “and I’m getting the feeling this crowd is a little uncomfortable with your being here —” “Oh my god,” I jumped in, “I’m so sorry! I totally should have picked up on that earlier, I hope you won’t hold it against me; I was actually about to head out ages ago, but I was — part of me was just being dumb,” I added, smiling. We shook hands, and he squeezed mine with a warmth that said it all. I jetted out of there, hailed a cab, and drove out to the E___ R_____ pier, where I watched the sun set over the water while I read that great bit from Homer about how graciously the dear old swineherd welcomes Odysseus into his house. And then it was all good.

That evening, I walked back into midtown and got a drink at a bar a lot of us go to after work; it was pretty empty, just a couple people in a corner playing games on their phones. Then Aiden came in, this really nice guy from work, pulled off his beanie when he saw me, came over, and said to me quietly, “Are you okay?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?” I said.
“The CIO threw you out of the reception.”
“Are you fucking kidding?” I said. “I was glad to leave, I couldn’t breathe in there.”
“Okay,” he said, “well, I’m glad you’re taking it well. I’m just bummed that’s the story everyone’s telling already.”

That’s when it started eating away at me. Every person from work who came in and stared at me, I kept thinking, you know why they’re looking at you? THAT’s why. I was…not in a good place.

And the way everyone keeps texting me now to say how SORRY for me they are, and everyone feels the need to tell me how my haters are all patting themselves on the back saying, “Finally, someone put that little kiss-ass back in his place, thinking he was so special, like the rules didn’t apply to him,” and all this other bullshit — it makes me want to stick a knife through my heart; because sure, whatever, “inner peace”, but I want to see the guy who can be zen when people are putting him down and they actually have the edge on him…when it’s just talk, then fuck it, let ‘em talk.