The Writer’s Corner features poetry, essays, short stories, satire and various fiction and non-fiction from SCAD Atlanta students. To submit your own work for the Writer’s Corner, email features@scadconnector.com.
‘If you knew then what I know now‘ by Stephanie Dejak
To My Younger Self,
You won’t feel very young when you’re reading this. You’ll beg me to stop looking at you with such inferiority; you’ll urge me that you’re doing everything just right. You’ll assure me that you’re doing things better than you would have six months ago, a year ago, two years ago. I know these things about you. I know that you’re stubborn and that you’re bored but you’re also brilliant and you’re intuitive. And I’m not necessarily here to tell you that you should do anything differently from what you’re already doing. Only because it might make for a decent piece of writing one day.
You’ll be hungry for something new the spring before you move to Georgia, maybe because you can taste a world that’s so different than the one you’ve always known, right on the tip of your tongue. You’ll dread another summer in your mundane beach town because the reality is that there’s nothing there for you anymore. You’ve met all the people that you’re ever going to meet there. You see their faces everywhere that you turn — you see them every Friday night sipping Long Island iced teas at Husk, you see them every Saturday morning underneath umbrellas at the too-cramped South End of Wrightsville Beach, you see them every Monday afternoon in the produce aisle at the Harris Teeter on Eastwood Road.
But I’m going to remind you that it just isn’t time to go somewhere new yet. You’ll roll your eyes. You already know this. You’re tired of hearing this. You’ll pout in the tiny living room that you’ve outgrown, and in the meantime, you’ll do what you do best — you’ll overthink every almost-something with every almost-lover you’ve ever had — you’ll remember stumbling over to apartments with bottles of cheap Chardonnay, you’ll reminisce on borrowed gray sweatshirts, you’ll long for pillow talks in between bedsheets and duvet covers.
One of these almost-lovers will offer to take you to dinner this time and you will take this as an indication that he’s changed. I’m going to tell you that he hasn’t. But nonetheless, he will take you to the only sushi restaurant that you haven’t been to, the one by the movie theater, and he will pay for the tempura roll that you ordered, the one with too much eel sauce. He will kiss you goodbye when he drops you off and you will see each other every day for a week after that.
“I think you’re beautiful,” he will tell you.
“Finding me beautiful and caring about me are not the same thing,” you will tell him, knowing that you can’t really blame him if you move away before he’s found the difference.
You will spend most of those nights illuminated by the blacklight in his bedroom, listening to Daniel Caesar sing of Georgia — of Atlanta — while you whisper the lyrics between his lips after too many raspberry seltzers, pretending that you won’t be calling that place your home by the end of the year. But you will still tell him that this feels different and that you’re scared and he will ask you why and you will tell him that it’s because you’re moving and then he will go silent.
And then he’ll do what he does best — he’ll overthink every character flaw that he has — he’ll remember that you were always destined for somewhere bigger, he’ll convince himself that you’re probably too good for him, you’ll convince yourself that he’s probably right. He will be a man of very few words after that.
It won’t sting any less. You don’t need me to tell you that part. It will sting when he looks you in the eyes weeks later and sees you — really sees you — and it will sting when he tells you that maybe you could love each other in another life. You’ll wish that you could love each other in this one. Even with answered questions to your over-thoughts and confirmation that the two of you aren’t on the same page — you’ll wish that he wasn’t such a slow reader, and you’ll wish that he’d just skip ahead. For a split second, you’ll wish that you didn’t have to leave this place and you’ll wish that it wouldn’t be problematic to stick him in your back pocket and take him with you. You’ll wish that that would make things better. I’m going to tell you that it won’t. You’re going to tell me that you know.
But maybe if you knew then what I know now, maybe you would’ve never reached out at all. Maybe it would’ve been better that way.
Sincerely,
Your Older, But Not Quite Wiser, Self