Apollo Fields | Dear Blank | Terrence Huie | Dear Problems | Writer

It’s crazy how you never go away. Even when I’m laying on the beach with a beer in my hand I can feel you in the back of my head, hanging like a cloud of smoke. I suppose it’s in our nature to fixate on something unless you meditate or get blasted everyday. I remember when I used to drown you like the muffled voices of my parents arguing in the kitchen. I’d fire up my Xbox and take a hit of my bong until the screen started to slow down.

It’s been a Long time since then. Since I recognized you for the cavity that you are. You only become unmanageable when ignored. Otherwise a little topical and a filling and I’m out the door. I guess it makes sense why I used to hate the dentist so much.

You mutate every few years but your sting never changes. Unrequited love in grade school still twists my stomach into knots. You alway bring the weight of the world with you, and more often that not your gravity is over-estimated. All I’ve ever needed to do was jump.

In my twenties you taunted me with an empty future, lending me ropes to climb nowhere. I scaled so many small walls to find something I hate on the other side. Then when Heather and I published our cookbook everything changed—kind of. It was the beginning of the end of fruitless pursuits.

In my thirties you showed me what emptiness feels like. It wasn’t some distant future it was Christmas Eve in the ER. It was watching my partner suffer. Now you have your eyes set on sending fissures through my family and I’m trying not to harden. I’m trying to dip my heart into that warm pool of naive peace that I swam in in my early twenties but I don’t know if it serves me anymore.

I know that you’re necessary and that you will always test me but I still want to slow down the screen. I still want to drown you out but I know the repercussions. I just wish you didn’t sting like you’ve always stung; I wish I could still feel full. Because every time I’ve overcome you—you’ve still taken something from me.

Fuck you,

Terrence