To the creator of Bojack Horseman
Somehow, in a bookshop in Bali, I came across the wonderful and exciting, “Someone will love you in all your damaged glory.” I was telling all my friends about my new fantastic read by the creator of “Bojack Horseman” and paced myself to not finish the entire thing in a few sittings.
There’s so much backstory you need to know before I can actually get into why this is relevant to you, so bear with me. In 2017, I started reading “Story of a Sociopath” by Julia Navarro after a sleepless 72 hours after getting my wisdom teeth out and baking in a house without AC in Phoenix, Arizona, during a heat wave. It was probably about 5 a.m., and the book opens with a delightful story about how a child sees a hurt bird in the road and steps on it (the narrator then tells what could’ve happened if the main character, in fact, was not a sociopath). Cue 6 a.m. Cracker Barrel opens, and I decide to go get breakfast. As I turn out my street, I see a bird sitting in the road. Mouth agape (as agape as anyone’s mouth can be), I just stare at it then slowly inch forward in the hopes that it’ll move. It doesn’t. Now I’m confronted with a moral quandary: if I leave the bird, I’m a sociopath (that’s the only option).
I pull over and search in my car for something to pick the bird up with. With a folder from my Senior English class that I had just graduated from, I start waving traffic to go around the bird. Cars pass by at a judgmentally slow pace. The thing looks more like an angry bird than a pigeon, and as I scoop up the blob of an animal, I realize maybe he wanted to die, maybe he was sick and this was his final act and now I’m the bad guy for not letting him go out the way he wished. I deposited him on the sidewalk, where he sat unmoving, unamused by my attempts to save his life. I crawl back into my Ford Focus and continue on my quest. Once I’m full of Cracker Barrel hash browns, I return to find him gone, and I stop reading the book.
Fast forward to 2021: the year I graduate from college. During my last few moments in college I decide to restart “Story of a Sociopath” again. It’s a good book with an interesting viewpoint, but I really just wanted to confirm that I wasn’t a sociopath. My plans after graduation had been shifted by COVID; all the study abroad programs in Spain were canceled, but luckily I had a friend of a friend who told me about a program to teach English in Madrid. As I talked to her through my laptop, I saw the image of a woman in a cozy apartment with her hot Spanish fiancée laughing and loving and being chic and cool and interesting. I immediately signed up for the program.
“Story of a Sociopath” is very long. It goes through the man’s entire life, giving examples of what sociopaths do and don’t. A few days after I made the decision to move, the main character finds himself in his adulthood. He moves to London for work and then quickly finds himself in (you guessed it) Madrid. At this point, I’m considering burning the book or wondering if I’ll die when the character dies at the end since it seems like this book is spelling out my life (am I actually a sociopath or no?). I finish the book and nothing else extraordinary happens.
Side bar: The span between 2017 and 2021 was filled with a lot of growing up. I confronted a lot of my issues with anxiety and depression. As a part of this process, someone told me to picture my life in the future, I had a clear image of myself until around 26 (I don’t know why I chose that number, it just felt right. Probably because 25 feels too soon, but 27 was too weird of a number). Some other voice through the internet mentioned that not being able to picture yourself alive could mean you’re suicidal. I didn’t think I was, so I moved on, dealing with the problems of my present day.
OKAY. Now we’re here. To today. I’m 25, turning 26 in a month. I’m traveling Souteast Asia and working as an editor for a travel magazine, a job that I question having every day, but everyone reminds me that this is someone else’s dream job. And at least it’s something I’m interested in. So I’m in Bali, surrounded by a loneliness I didn’t feel in other countries and seeing death everywhere: driving a motorbike while remembering the people from my town that have died in motorcycle accidents, my surf instructor telling me a guy died on the beach a day before, a news report about a man’s carcass that was found in a water tank. Actually I read a different book before yours, “If Cats Disappeared from the World” by Genki Kawamura. A charming story about a man who is dying and makes a deal with the devil to get rid of an object every day to give him another day of life. I read it in about three days because there wasn’t anyone distracting me and went back to the bookshop to find yours.
I’ve always loved short stories, and I enjoyed the fact that this one was written by the creator of “Bojack Horseman.” So I’m reading it, and it’s great and honestly the best written work I’ve read in a while. I made sure to not speed through this one and pace myself to really savor each story. And then I get to “You Want to Know What Plays Are Like?” and I read the sentence, “So it would be pretty weird if the younger character was any older than 26, because that’s how old Shannon was when she died.” But, I’m Shannon? And I’m turning 26? And how did this fucking piece of shit writing know my destiny ends at 26? I physically said out loud in my Airbnb “Shut the fuck up” and decided I just needed to laugh to make sense of it all (or really just laugh because literally what other option is there besides write and email to the author demanding him to cite his sources for his inspiration to prove he wasn’t following me) and am I really gonna die in the next month?
Anyway, if you could provide any insight into that passage, I’d much appreciate it.
Sincerely,
A 25, almost 26, year-old concerned reader named Shannon
Since reading that, I was scammed by an old French couple in Singapore. In Thailand, I was hit (gently) by a motorbike and harrassed by a man in my hostel. Plus, I set my purse on fire. But hey, the devil has yet to take me under her wing.
Moovin & Groovin 