March 30th, 2026 - Floating
Dear TNY,
March is nearing its end and “Floating” is what you have to offer this week.
Firstly, I appreciate how brief this story is. It’s under 3100 words! The writing was tight. Compressed. And it wasn’t showy. That’s nice. But, I didn’t get it? I had a sense early on that I was going to like the story, but as it continued to unfold, I found that I was liking it less and less because I could feel it losing its grip on a crescendo. So by the time we get to the tadpoles, I was like, “Welp, that happened.” Maybe it was the plot that did it? I’m not fifty yet, so I can’t say for certain that I won’t change, but I wouldn’t make the same decision she did. She was obviously interested in the dude, that was made clear in the beginning. And then she found out that he fell in love with her at first sight, and you’d think she’d jump on that knowing she was interested, right? She didn’t have anyone in the way. And he may have had someone but that wasn’t made clear nor did she take the time to even contact him to find out. She said late in the story:
I always thought that when you love someone—when you say that you fell in love at first sight—it will become something. You’ll pursue it because you might not ever feel that again. Maybe that’s too hard. The idea of losing someone important to you is too great a risk, so you never make anyone important to you.
I don’t get the second part. Who gives a shit if it’s too hard? You pursue it because you may never feel that again. I’ve fallen that way twice in my life. And both times it was a fucking disaster bomb. But just fucking twice, you know? I have a friend who’s in her mid thirties and it’s never fucking happened for her. There are a lot of people that it never happens for. So you’re goddamn right you fucking pursue because as far as we know you only get one time around this fucking joint, why would you squander love? And this lady just let it go. Without even trying? I don’t like it. Because you might lose this guy and losing someone important to you is too much? All life is is gaining things and then losing them. Life is a pay to play game and the payment is suffering. Grab that motherfucker while you still can, even if the relationship is going to blow up. The relationships you have are the only thing that will matter to you when you are dying. Why fuck around in the shallow end?
And later, she says:
When you are young, you think that the people who say they love you actually do. That forever might still have time to play out.
Forever always has time to play out if you believe.
God, I wish I didn’t believe some days. In magic. The collective unconscious. The whatever. I wish I could get old and hard and cynical and angry. I’d have better boundaries. I would pull back the reins on my heart, keep it a little more safe. I wouldn’t be so fucking destroyed right now, that’s for sure. But at what cost?
I wrote a wild letter once, maybe I should look into making it an essay. It was a letter titled “To My Potential Partner” and I didn’t write it with anyone in mind, more of like a pamphlet to be given out to a person who might be interested so they could see what they were getting into. I wrote that thing almost ten years ago. But in it, I describe this street in my mind. It’s lined with homes, each one unique and beautiful. Streetlamps light the brick lane, the landscaping is on point with manicured trees and bushes everywhere. Each house is a person/relationship. A woman I’ve formed a relationship with. In fact, I’m just going to pull what I wrote in that letter. This is slightly edited and it’s from a section of the letter titled “Losing My Goddamn Mind”:
Losing My Goddamn Mind – So, I don’t really know how to express what I need to say here. During our relationship I will lose my goddamn mind. Many times. I apologize. You’ll likely think I can’t stand you. That I’m crazy. That I’m broken. Etc. But I’ll tell you now what’s happening so that you know. When I can no longer tell you things without a negative response from you, it will hurt me. The negative responses will hurt, yes. But nothing compared to when I can no longer talk to you for fear that you will hurt me. When this happens enough, I will start dismantling the feelings I have inside my head for you. Now, that is what it seems like at the time, the dismantling. That you are a huge mansion made of bricks and I’m just dismantling those bricks in my mind such that eventually when I look for my feelings for you, there is no mansion and I wonder why I am still with you. BUT, the mansion is still there. What’s actually happened is that I have turned into two people. One person, he dismantles the mansion where it was. This is the guy who is trying to protect my heart. But he has to put the bricks somewhere. The other person, this person we will refer to as “Hot Chocolate Guy”, he goes to the brick pile and he builds the mansion somewhere else, in secret. So I end up believing that the feelings are diminishing and then I lose my mind. As you can see, there are two forces competing for my headspace and they offer differing directions. It’s all bad. I start tearing myself apart from the inside out. Then I push you away so that you’ll stop hurting me. And it’s only then that I realize I don’t want you to leave. I search frantically for my feelings for you but they aren’t there and then you are gone and I feel like I’m drowning and I won’t survive. Then I stumble upon the house that Hot Chocolate Guy built. It’s in the neighborhood with the other houses. And when I see it, it’s so fucking beautiful and it’s got Christmas lights on it and it’s glowing like the sun. You see, what I wanted was to not be hurt. What I wanted was to tell you everything. What I wanted was for you to accept me, or at least be willing to try to understand. Somehow that got all fucked up and translated into something else. But it’s usually too late then. The end result is I love you forever, a mansion built just for you lined with lights, a warm stove in the fire, and I’ll wander its empty halls and cry from time to time. It takes me YEARS to let someone go. If ever. So what you are seeing (me pushing you away) is not really what’s happening in my head. I’m fighting to survive being hurt and it looks like insanity on the outside.
Boy howdy, what a thing. Look, I’m not sitting here saying this is a good way to live. I mean, do I look happy? Also, I’m not trying to say that you should go collect as many houses as you can. I don’t think that’s good either. But I am saying you should take some fucking chances and have some houses on your street. The feeling of falling in love is beyond measure. It is truly the reason for living. But the feeling of falling in love at first sight is so rare and fleeting it should not be overlooked or passed over. Yeah, things get sketchy if you are with someone else. I’m not just blowing by that. I don’t even know what to say about that, to be honest. I’ll just recognize it exists and leave it at that.
She also says:
Not a lot of people get together for love. You get older, and you just hope that someone is there in the middle of the night.
She even recognizes that not a lot of people get together for love and she’s got that chance right in front of her and doesn’t take it. It’s like winning the lottery and then throwing your ticket away because you feel like you might get robbed or spend the money wrong. I don’t understand why we can’t have both. Why can’t I have love and someone to be there in the night?
And then she says:
When you are dealing with your health you don’t think of love. You think about stability. About the person who will help you to the bathroom, wipe you when you can’t make it to the toilet, clean and bandage you because you can’t bend at the right angle to reach the wound.
I can tell you when you are dealing with your health, you think about both things. I am consumed by love everyday because love brings stability. I have friends all over this country who love me and are worried and I get offers to take care of me, visits, especially when it comes to my health. I’m currently staring down the barrel of potential heart surgery and I have no one to drive me to the surgery, no one to pick me up, and no home to go back and forth to. Talk about no stability. And these people in my life want to help. I have had multiple offers to go to the hospital with me, get hotel rooms, look after me, make sure I’m okay. But it’s that fucking romantic love, man, you need that person that’s going to wipe your ass. That will hold your hand. That’s what it’s all about, going through hard shit together. Because love. Shit you do to each other. Shit that’s done to you. That no matter what happens, you’ll hold hands and get through it. And that’s how you end up with someone in the bed next to you at night, listening to them snore, and thinking, “What a privilege it is to hear this noise, the noise of this person that I love who could be anywhere else in the world doing anything, and the thing they want to do is to go unconscious next to me because I make them feel safe and loved.” That’s the fucking lottery win, man. That’s love. Hell, the other day I was talking to a friend about how I’ve had a few girlfriends who came into the bathroom to pee while I was in the shower and then they poop also and then I’m in a miasma of steamy poop stench and it’s my mouth, man, and I think to myself every single time, “If I wasn’t in this shit cloud, she wouldn’t be here, and I would feel lost without her.” I fucking love love, man. I am so eternally optimistic about the beauty of love. I’m just so fucking damaged now I don’t know how to go on without it.
Anyway, I’m not doing much better, as you can see. I have a doctor’s appointment in a couple of days that will hopefully help with the sciatica. It would be nice to be able to sneeze or cough without my left leg catching fire. I guess, I don’t have much else to say about what’s happening with me. People are worried, as stated. And frustrated. And I can’t find any sort of balance in all this. I don’t want to make people worry. I get they care. I was just telling the truth when they asked questions. I’m starting to hide information now, to spare feelings. I think that might be the course for a while. I don’t know. I don’t know how to do any of this as there is no manual for life and I haven’t lived one before.
Anyway, we’ll see you around.
Nick
P.S. Fun fact about that brick in the photo. It’s in Charleston, SC, and those fingerprints are those of a slave child. They estimate the child was around 9 years old because at around 10 they were old enough to go into the fields and work.
