Someone Read to the End

Here's the thing about burying a sentence at the bottom of a post: it only works if nobody gets there.

I published that fall routines post five weeks into the semester and told myself it was fine, breezy, list-y, low stakes. I mentioned the Creative Writing course the way you mention something embarrassing in a footnote, in a single line near the end, right before the sign-off. I figured it would just sit there quietly. I figured the people who made it that far were already mostly gone.

Then I got a comment this week. Not from someone I knew, from a classmate. She said she'd found The Hartwells through a Google search of our professor's name, of all things. She'd read the whole post. She'd read that line. And she left a comment that said, essentially: I didn't know you were writing something. I do too. Maybe we should talk.

the moment after reading it. the window. the thinking.

I've been sitting with that comment for two days now. I keep opening it, reading it again, closing my laptop. It's the strangest feeling, not bad, just exposing in a way I wasn't braced for. The blog has always felt like a room I get to control. I decide what's in it. I decide what's in the background and what's in focus. And then somebody walks in and notices the one thing you left leaning against the wall because you couldn't figure out where else to put it.

chin on hand. reading. not ready for what it said.

I don't know yet what I'm going to say back to her. But I think I'm going to say something. I also think, and this part surprised me, I'm not actually upset that she read it. I think I maybe wanted someone to. I just didn't expect it to happen on a random Tuesday in September, with a mug of tea going cold next to my laptop and zero emotional preparation. Typical.