I’m reading tons of old emails and thinking, Do we ever really change? I keep finding evidence that my character hasn’t changed, it has just unfolded. I’m remembering when I was thirteen and I got mad at Mark for not figuring out how he was going to get home from a Boy Scout event so that my mom had to give him a ride home, which was no problem, but what if she couldn’t give you a ride? I had demanded. And I’m realizing this militant you must take care of yourself attitude has shoved me into similar conflicts for the past ten years. And I’m thinking I don’t have a strong enough community, but I just moved to the city, but I never really had it in Chicago, and I’m reading emails about my discontent with Madison and thinking, Do we ever really change? I keep finding evidence that happiness is rather constant and we will never really fix anything. I’m as anxious as I was in high school, still struggling for the same things. We want some friends, we want some money, we want good food to cook for our lover, and we want a legacy. It’s the damn Red Queen Effect, no matter how fast we run, our surroundings keep pace with us. And I’m running and reading old emails about how I was going to make my life better and thinking, Do we ever really change? I want to put my love into my work. I want a group of friends that is as close as a family. I want to create art. I want to be stable. I want to be better than I am. I remember telling myself Just get through this, then you can have anything, and I got through it. And now I’m getting through something else and I’m reading old emails about how everything would be perfect in time and thinking, Do we ever really change? We just want to feel a connection, we just want honesty and loyalty. We found it a couple times, in a couple people, but this damn big world keeps tearing us away from each other. And we did leave a few scars on the big bad world once or twice when we were working hard on something important, but this damn big world keeps hurling us into newness and from this angle the beast looks fine. And we have loved but it always hurts. I’ve had everything I could ever want, but not all at the same time, so I’m thinking, Is this just a lifelong juggling act? Will we ever get it all? And I can read old emails about how I had some of it here and some of it there, but I’m still lost and I’m still thinking, Do we ever really change?