When I was a kid, I used to get obsessed with stuff. Just random things. don’t know, giraffes. I was crazy for giraffes when I was little, I had to have giraffes on everything. My mom did a giraffe-themed birthday party. I called my baby sister ‘Giraffy’ for months.
And then I caught a cold, got this terrible earache. When it was over, I no longer gave one single fuck about giraffes. Just like that.
Then in high school, I got really into pickling. Pickled everything you could put in a jar of hot vinegar. One day, Jimmy Arbeiter gave me some shit about reading The Hobbit. I haven’t touched a gherkin since.
It was always that way. I’d latch on to something – skateboarding, comic books, Scandinavian death metal, believe it or not – and then something would happen, unrelated, totally random, and I’d be off the one thing and into another.
It was pretty great for my parents, because they could just dismiss anything that looked like trouble. ‘It’s a phase, he’ll grow out of it.’ Most of the time I did. It was when things were going really well they’d start to worry. When I became obsessed with making good grades. Volunteering at a soup kitchen. Yoga. They knew at some point I’d drop it and probably go in a completely opposite direction. My freshman year in college I went from juicing kale to eating copious amounts of cured meats, mainly because some lady cut me off in the parking lot at Kroger.
I figured you would be like that. Kale. Or prosciutto. Either one.
So I didn’t hold back. I let myself dream, you know? Flash-mob proposal, honeymoon in Greece... We’d renovate a loft in Gowanus, we’d adopt Corgis, the whole happily-ever-after. I went there. I let you in.
Because I knew, at some point, something would happen and I wouldn’t want you anymore. You’d be giraffes. You’d be pickles.
But it’s been six weeks and I can’t stop thinking about you. It’s all I do anymore.
So you have to help me. Do something horrible maybe. Something so I don’t want you anymore. I should look at your picture and feel pain. I should associate your image with tragedy. I need you to break my habit because this…? Is not working.
I can’t keep stewing this way. I have to find a way to move on.
I have to move on.