November the 10th,
The Year of Our Lord 1865
My name is Tesni Fairchild and I’m not certain who I am.
I know what I am. I am a typist. I am a woman who just turned thirty. I am a spinster and a hapless academic and a voracious reader of pulp fiction.
I was a generally happy person before. Sometimes I’d get a bit melancholic whenever one of my lady associates took their life into a new and profound direction. I suppose I was jealous of their successes in the matronly fields of matrimony and motherhood. While they played hostesses, I plied my trade in the advent of new office-spaces.
They never worked. I only worked.
They were doted upon.
I doted.
My parents are not entirely to blame, but they had something to do with it. One day, my little sister got married… and that was the end of worrying over my state of affairs. She got the dowry. She got the summer house. She got the reception to envy a duchy. She got the beautiful husband and lovely in-laws. From my parents, she got all their hopes and dreams for the future.
As for Tesni?
I got a typewriter.
So I was not forgotten, at least.
Flying from the nest for me came naturally. My parents were concerned about what the neighbors would think. I did grant them the reassurance that I wasn’t eloping. I merely wanted a space to call my own. They respected that.
Five years on, and I had all but become a hermit in my ways. I still have friends from that time, but we rarely talk anymore. I was happy in my solitude, besides the occasional bouts of loneliness. It was not that I was missing someone in particular, but rather that I was missing something… Perhaps it was a general angst over missing out on life’s basic functions.
Grow up, get married, have children, die… None of those things appealed to me, yet I felt lesser having never felt the urge to doggedly pursue them. Was I broken, somehow? Had I somehow broken myself?
No, I would soon find. I hadn’t figured out the mechanics of breaking things, let alone people, let alone myself, yet.
Yet.
ns 15.158.61.8da2
