The Lost Sketch
A young man’s plaint
(NOTE: It’s an essay written by a relatively young man. Its wistful tone has so touched me that I stopped many beats between reading the words in the piece, rummaging answers to what has gone awry in this young man’s journey. I decided to publish this, no edits, with his permission, in the hope that some readers could relate with my son’s plaint.)
Look at him. He’s been at this diagram for a while. And it doesn’t even mean anything. Not at this very moment, nor any time in his future. My future. But he didn’t know it then. And so he ponders, and sketches.
I remember myself at that moment. How the future ahead can be anything. And how it will revolve around a specific person. A specific girl, obviously. Dreaming of making the sketch come true at some point. Planning the steps to get there. And everything else that must be ignored.
Nothing will interfere with it.
Nothing must interfere.
I was so certain. So fixated that this is what I have ahead of me. It was all so… clinically planned — the steps to effect it, not the sketch itself.
I miss that certainty. This was my version, my instance, that’s the most steeped with it. I will never be as certain of anything afterwards.
