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Dear Jax,
When you abstracted, I lost a lot……of arms. Corraling your glitched ass into that blanket fort. Gee, hope you're comfortable there. Some of those arms were old favorites. I mean, I hated them all at that point, but since when have I ever liked any of my stupid goddamn parts?
Except a little recently I guess. But it's not enough for me to think the feeling will last. The fucking Zooble cycle where I find a part and I'm like, great, this feels right, and then in a few weeks I think I'll vomit if I have to look at it one more time.
And now I'm turning my "coping strategy" into a personal diary. Ugh, I guess I'll explain this whole thing. Like you'll ever actually read this shit.
So, I was visiting you, or, what's left of you the other day and generally feeling shitty. You sucked but I didn't want to watch you die, I guess. And Kinger wandered in and did that bizarre thing where he's suddenly all wise and knowledgeable and doesn't get distracted by dust motes. And he told me when he first started losing friends in the Circus he'd write them letters.
"What's the point of writing him letters? He's abstracted. There's not enough there to read shit," I asked.
"It can be healing to get your thoughts out on paper anyway," Kinger said. "Really, I think it would be good for you."
And despite everything Kinger is actually someone I kind of respect. So now I'm writing this.
Even when you were alive, you would never have bothered to read anything I wrote you anyway.
Because you were an asshole. You were an insufferable, insensitive, unlikeable, violent jackass who had absolutely no interest in changing and didn't have a sympathetic bone in your body and…
I don't have bones either.
Oh my god. I'm so done with this. Fuck Kinger, I'm never writing another one of these.
-Zooble
Dear Jax,
Gangle admitted she's glad you abstracted today.
She's not like, celebrating or something. This is Gangle we're talking about. She's better than both of us put together. Not that I'd blame her if she did…anyway, she's just relieved she isn't being constantly bullied anymore. (Nice going, by the way.) And that her life is objectively better and she's happier now that you're gone.
But she misses you, still. I didn't know you named her until she told me the other night. You two were partners for every team adventure for months. Maybe years. There was a sort of dependence there that leads to attachment, no matter how toxic. It can't just dissolve overnight.
You sure left her a lot of trauma. You can't get away with that just because you were sad.
…You were really, REALLY sad, weren't you? I don't know how to explain it. Sometimes I wonder who was sadder—you or Gangle. The girl trapped with an actual fucking tragedy mask for a face, or one purple and pink Bugs Bunny knockoff.
I guess it doesn't matter. You're dead, and Gangle's alive. Only one of you have the chance to grow and recover.
And yet here I am, writing you letters like you'll ever read them. Like you'll ever have a chance to.
You weren't a good person!!! I knew that. I didn't like you. I thought you had potential to change. Nothing more. And I knew only you could make that choice and you were refusing like a little fucking vulnerability would kill you. But I guess part of me assumed you'd give it up some day and get better.
I don't know why I assumed that. It made no sense. Real life doesn't always have a happy ending. I know that pretty intimately. But the idea of you not getting one never felt real until you were already gone.
-Zooble
P.S. Fucking Ming showed up in my room after I wrote those last couple paragraphs.
Dear Jax,
I used to think I understood you. That you were just a jerk who got off on making other people miserable. Just a random high school bully who never grew the fuck up.
I don't think that's right exactly. And I have no idea if that's because my idea of you specifically was wrong or if because my concept of bullies is wrong.
I was mostly annoyed by you. I wasn't scared of you or something. I was mad when you stole my parts and kinda horrified over how you treated Gangle and that was it. I think everyone else was scared of you. Gangle mostly, Ragatha a little, and Pomni wasn't afraid so much as just aware of how unpredictable you always were. Hell, sometimes I actually thought you were funny. When you were making an actual joke instead of just torturing other people and passing it off as comedy.
Is it just me or was there some kind of really fucked up and hateful camradery there though? I mean, everyone else just kinda took what you dished out. I threw the pie back in your face. Sometimes I think you appreciated it. Maybe you were bored.
Everyone else in this circus are like, nice people. Ragatha's mom made her too scared to say anything mean, Gangle is a sweetheart, Kinger acts like a dad, and Pomni is just. An actual normal person. I don't really know what to do with all my snark anymore. I guess I could shittalk Caine but it doesn't feel great to shittalk a guy who's actually making an effort to change. Like you never did.
I'm not an easy person to get along with. But that never mattered with us because you weren't even trying so I could just say fuck it and not try either.
I guess that wasn't actually the best choice in hindsight. But really, what were you expecting? You aren't weren't a charmingly grumpy cartoon character, you were an asshole. Of course I wasn't gonna make the effort.
But I still feel bad about it now that you're gone. I still wish I pushed more.
I tried to get you to open up at the beach, remember? Was I not obvious enough? Did you think I was just, I don't know, rubbing it in that you felt bad? I was trying to reach out, man. I know I'm abrasive but surely you didn't think I wasn't gonna help you if you were thinking about abstracting?
My god, what was your problem!?
-Zooble
Dear Jax,
Today we decided to go on an "adventure." Which basically just means going to a different map to hang out there and get the circus colors out of our eyes for a while.
It was Pomni's turn to pick somewhere so she decided for us to go to the candy mesa near the Candy Crush Canyon Kingdom for a night out. It was at one of those old timey saloons from cowboy movies. Like, with batwing doors and creaky flooring. We found a seat and I sat next to Gangle and then looked over to her other side to make sure you weren't sitting near her. Obviously, you weren't. I felt relieved and also just…hollow.
So we ordered drinks. Ragatha noticed me staring at the bartender. (Reappearing Guy. You remember him? Disappearing Guy's gimmicky ex.) "Are you okay, Zooble?" Ragatha asked me.
"I was just thinking about the Triangle Bar," I admitted. The Triangle Bar is the name of the bar the real me runs in the real world. It's a hub for the local queer community. You go there. Leroy Mateo.
I'm pretty fucking bitter. I hate to admit it when everyone else seems to have come to terms with being here, but I'm still just…seething over the life I could've had. I started a little bar in the Circus and I like it but it's never gonna be the same. In the real world, I serve hundreds of unknown people and have an Instagram hashtag and finally achieved my dream of creating a safe haven for the local lgbtqia2s+ community. All before 30. Pretty cool, right? It's everything I wanted to make of my life.
In here, I have, what? I haven't even named the goddamn bar. I can serve alcohol to the five people I already know. I'm not making a difference or helping anyone. I definitely didn't help you. I told you that we weren't gonna have you wander off and abstract and then that's exactly what we did.
Ugh. I'm so done. More stuff happened tonight but I'm done with this fucking letter. I hope you're enjoying hell.
-Zooble
Dear Jax,
It's been a few months since you kicked the bucket. Things have never been better and it's so…bittersweet. I don't know. If you had stuck around for just a few more days, you might have lived. Every time we have a fun day we start feeling bad because you aren't here to experience it. Pomni has pretty bad survivors' guilt, she's been having one-on-one talks with Kinger nearly every day.
We'll like, go shop at the mall adventure map, or go look at animals at the savannah, and we'll have a good time but the entire time there's just this dark cloud hanging over everything. Because you should be there, killing something or breaking something or saying something no one wants to hear. When something goes wrong sometimes Ragatha even starts yelling "JAX!" instinctively and it brings down the whole mood.
And I'm getting tired of it. Getting tired of grieving you. I've lost friends before but this is different. We weren't friends. I can't "cherish the good times" because there weren't any. But I still miss you anyway. God, I hate that. I hate that I miss you, I hate writing that down and making it feel real, I hate you.
I realized the other day that the only people who might understand what I'm going through are the ones who are, coincidentally, going through the literal same thing.
So I asked everyone how they've been coping with losing you. Except Gangle, because I already know how she's coping, which is a lot of vent art and a looot of OC torture. Though she's been moving away from that second one for some reason. And also not Pomni, because reminding her about it on a good day is just cruel.
So just Kinger and Ragatha, basically.
I asked Kinger first. Got a whole spiel as usual with him. He said, "Helping Pomni has been helping me. It keeps me grounded, and reminds me I still have the rest of you to fight for, which I can't do if I'm dwelling on the past. I can't go back to save him and if I don't live in the present I'll miss out on good times and doing what needs to be done. I let it hurt and just keep trying. And…" Then he gave me this significant look, what the hell does that mean? "I remind myself it's no one's fault and we all tried our best, and even now we've done our best to make him safe and comfortable in the blanket fort."
He makes it sound so easy.
So I went to Ragatha, and what she said really surprised me. "I pray for him," she muttered.
That REALLY caught me off guard. "You're religious?"
"NO! I mean…kind of? No, not really." She gave that incredibly awkward fake laugh—you know the one. "I was raised Christian. I don't really believe in it anymore, but…well…" her face began to cotort a little, but she was still smiling. "We can't save him, and Kinger can't save him, and Caine can't save him, and that leaves God as pretty much my only choice, haha! I know praying doesn't do anything, but I just hope that maybe if He exists, He'll get bored and see my prayer request and go, yeah, why not? And I don't lose anything by trying! Just my stability! There's…nothing else I can do anyway." Her voice broke on that last sentence.
I stared at her for a minute and she drooped a little. "Sorry, I know it's weird. I only do it when I feel hopeless."
"It's fine," I told her. "I mean, I asked."
So, both of those were useless.
Maybe I could try drawing, like Gangle does. I could design a memorial tattoo. That was one of my specialties back when I was Riley.
But there's a mental block. How can I design a memorial that captures you when I barely understand you and flip flop between pitying and despising you every odd hour?
As usual, this letter didn't help. I should stop writing this bullshit.
-Zooble
Dear Jax,
My parts situation was always awkward. I hated the fact I was in this stupid plastic body. I hated how obvious my issue was, that everyone could clearly see my very personal problem. Most of all I hated not knowing what I wanted out of it, while being CERTAIN it wasn't what I had.
But I survived because I connected with the people around me. I was fairly standoffish. Skipping adventures does that. But like…I wasn't like you. I had better relationships going on almost zero adventures than you did going on every single one.
When I first got here, I mainly relied on Ragatha. She is far from perfect but she actually tried—must have spent hours sorting through my bin with me, holding up part after part, patiently discarding them when I didn't want them. Kaufmo was already on his way out for most of my time here but I could always count on him to just complain or joke without having solutions pushed on me. And Gangle is such a good listener. She makes me feel like it's okay to be a chaotic mismatch of cobbled together cartoon bits, like she likes me anyway. Finds me handsome, even.
It all ended recently when I started just…listening to myself. I realized that maybe it's okay to switch parts a lot. To not fixate on finding the perfect right combo and just wear what feels good today and then whatever feels good tomorrow. It's not all good, I still have bad days, or start hating my parts halfway through an adventure, but. It's progress. I'm not putting so much pressure on a single solution anymore. Just…letting it be a slightly different solution every day.
If my problem hadn't been so obvious, would I have ever talked about it? Whatever problem you had, you didn't get the excruciating opportunity of having no choice like I did. I envy you for that. I'm also terrified of how things could have been different.
I don't know. Today's a bad day. I hate everything I am today.
-Zooble
Dear Jax,
Why do I start all these letters with 'dear Jax'? You aren't dear to me at all!
The point is this: Gangle had a breakdown, and you had something to do with it. I mean…you. You know. The you that lives in a blanket fort and aquarium depending on the day. The shadow of you. What's left of you.
It's…strange. I always just thought of abstraction as death. The end. And the only reason we'd take care of the abstractions is sentimental value. But…am I wrong about that?
I don't know. I've visited you but never in the way that Pomni and everyone else does. They talk to you. Interact. I just kind of…exist.
Am I missing out? It feels wrong. Is that still you in there? It doesn't feel like it, but maybe I'm not looking hard enough.
Basically, Gangle tripped down the stairs and broke her comedy mask badly. Like, shattered it to pieces. And usually that'd just regular suck but something must have been really bothering her because she screamed and cried for HOURS. She also went into a few giggling fits in the middle of it all. She exhausted herself so badly I had to carry her back to her room. She fell asleep in my arms and I tucked her in and thought that was it.
She was gone in the morning.
I admit it, I really freaked out. I was…so terrified that she'd abstracted. That I'd missed the signs again, didn't do enough again. Just like with you.
But we found her safe and sound in your pillow fort. When we woke her up, she just said, "It's okay. I'm ready to go now." And then she looked back at you and went, "Goodbye. For good, this time."
I don't understand. Everyone else is…dealing with it. Getting closure. Healing. How can they? How is everything so easy for them? Why am I so unchangeably fucked up?
You're dead you're dead you're fucking dead! Kaufmo's dead! You're dead! But everyone's just. Talking to those, those meaningless piles of corrupted files, and…
I don't understand any of this shit.
-Zooble
Dear Jax,
This is the last time I'm writing to you. I'm serious this time. You don't deserve my time. Or maybe I don't deserve yours. Is there a real difference? The point is you've never read these and they've never helped me and I'm done, I'm fucking done.
I want to stop grieving you. I want to stop wondering how things would be different if you'd stayed. I want to stop feeling conflicted and rotten and shaken up. I want to let go of the past and look forward to the future like everyone else is.
So I'm not writing to you anymore.
Stop taking up space in my thoughts. This is the last time I'm asking you this.
-Zooble
Dear Jax LenoreWHATEVER,
Fuck!!!! Fuck!!! FUCK! You were a girl! You were trans just like me this entire fucking time and I didn't know!
Fuck you! Fuck you!!! Why didn't you talk to me, you motherfucking bitch bastard!? WHY DID YOU LEAVE ME TO DEAL WITH THIS!?!?
Fuck you.
Oh my god…
Okay, I'm gonna. Back up. I'm gonna. Try to make this letter coherent.
It's kind of a weekly tradition to look through our real life selves' social media pages. Just to keep ourselves updated. It started out normal today. Zoey posted another chapter of her webcomic. Grant and Destiny shared an old baby picture of their second daughter. Suzie hasn't posted recently because she's been busy. The Triangle Bar hosted a trivia night.
And then we clicked on your Instagram page. And it didn't have your deadname. It said Lenore Mateo, and there was a single new post with a picture of a sunrise that just said, "She/her. Don't ask follow up questions or I'll kill you."
And I just ran away. Because. This was what was making you so sad, wasn't it? This is what you never told us, this is why you abstracted, this is why you got so upset about the, the FUCKING MAID OUTFIT!
You don't understand. I've lost so many friends. Friends who went missing and were queer and brown and thus never even looked for. Friends who forced themselves back in the closet to try to survive and disassociated themselves from me. Friends who just couldn't keep going and killed themselves.
And now you too! You died, too, and I couldn't save you! You're just another one of the countless dead girls adding to the statistics! And I! Did! Nothing!
All I've ever wanted was to feel like myself, and that made me want to help others with the same thing. My job should've been easier in the circus since it was just one fucking chicken fetus in an Easter egg instead of the whole queer community of the city.
And I dropped the ball. Dropped the goddamn bowling ball.
And just like everyone else, you died.
We could've talked. We could've commiserated about hating our bodies. We could've come up with other options when you felt like leaving. We could've…we could've helped each other. I could've helped you!
I don't…know what to do. I don't know what to do with any of this.
-Zooble
Dear Daisy,
Writing out your circus name feels too much like deadnaming you and calling you Lenore doesn't seem right when no one else uses their real names and you DEFINITELY wouldn't either. So this is the compromise. It still feels wrong and guilty. There's no winning with you. There never has been. But Pomni thinks you'd like it, or at least get a kick out of it, and she actually kind of knew you.
So. You were a woman. Part of me always suspected something was going on, but…I don't know. It's way different to think oh, you're such an egg, then to actually know you were and it wasn't just me projecting onto you.
"Aren't you supposed to be miserable about your ability to choose your own body or something?" You said that to me on the beach. The last "normal" moments we had before everything changed.
Remembering that hits different now that I know what you are.
Lenore is thriving. She's living her best life. Sometimes she plays piano at my bar.
I would've liked that in here, too. It could've been lovely.
We could've been friends. We could've talked to each other. Been there for each other about these stupid avatars. I feel…robbed. You're the only person who could have understood what I'm going through. Gangle is so sweet, but she hasn't experienced it. Not like you have. The dysphoria. The creeping sense of wrongness poisoning every good day. The endless search for peace with no clear destination.
Maybe that's what I've been grieving this whole time. You were someone who would have understood me. We would've been best friends. But that's never gonna happen now.
Daisy…why did you do this to yourself? Why did you take away the only person who might be able to get me?
…
-Zooble
Dear Daisy,
It's been a year. A whole goddamn year since you abstracted. A year since you left Ragatha and Pomni to feel shitty about not being able to save you. A year since Kinger's stopped having to patiently tolerate your bitching. A year where Gangle's been struggling with the weight of everything you did and everything you were.
A year since I turned my arms into a lasso and shoved you in that pillow fort. A year since I lost the chance to be your friend. A year since I lost the chance to know you.
What…do I do…with this?
You're twenty-three in real life. Lenore made an Instagram post. She had cupcakes and wore a dress. She's been showing her face more often in her posts.
A year since you abstracted.
When you abstracted, I lost a lot.
-Zooble
Dear Daisy,
I'm gonna try to talk to you.
-Zooble
Dear Daisy,
It was evening when I went to visit you. Gangle and Ragatha were out at the mall adventure. They like to "play dress up" sometimes. Pomni decided to go to the candy mesa to visit Gumigoo. Kinger…I didn't see him yet.
I went to the pillow fort, but you weren't there. I was really confused before I remembered the aquarium.
It's funny, I knew you went down there sometimes but I never thought about the fact you just went there when you wanted. I never thought about the fact you had the capacity to do that.
I went down there. Kinger was napping down there, I saw, snuggled up to Queenie. I get the impression he does that a lot but I never saw it. I kind of avoided this place.
I looked out at the aquarium. I saw Kaufmo first. (The one time I was down here, Ragatha taught me who was who. There are tiny differences between you. Hard to see at first but once you do, you can't miss it.)
I saw you, and you happened to be going up the hatch back to your pillow fort for the night just then. Because of course, you had to make me chase you around. Annoying as fuck, even abstracted.
So I walked back up again and I approached the mouth of your blanket cave. I almost turned around, but I know myself well enough to know I needed to do this.
I walked in. It was so dark in there I could barely see my attached-on hand in front of my face. In there, we are both free of having to see ourselves. You were sleepy, but you blinked up at me with your dozens of eyes.
I waved awkwardly. "Hi, Daisy. I, uh. I came to…hang out."
You woke up and looked at me for a while.
"There's a reason I never did this before, this feels weird," I said.
You grunted.
I stood there awkwardly and silently for a minute. And that's when I noticed you were…making some kind of sound. It was like growling, but more raspy. And it was going up and down, up and down melodically.
It took me a long, long time to figure out what you were humming.
Daisy Bell.
Even now, broken down, reduced to the most basic parts of your code, the ability to make me mad is still an essential part of you.
And then I cried over you. And you nosed at me, still humming that lovely, beautiful, wonderful, stupid fucking song.
We'll never banter back and forth at my little bar. We'll never team up on an adventure and cause chaos. We'll never cuss out Ming or Orbsman or someone else together. I'll never use how you used to be a bully to get you to do something for me. You'll never call me Zoobie or Zoobs or Zolo Blocks unironically. I'll never listen to you play piano at my bar. You'll never convince me to try makeup with you. We'll never play a game of darts, or pool, or share a drink. We'll never lean on each other on dysphoric days. It's too late. I've known this for a while.
It's too late for so many things. But not for this. Not for a little peace and calm in your pillow fort. Not to live in the present like everyone else is.
Fuck, girl. I'm so sorry this happened to you. I don't care if you did it to yourself. We aren't all that different at all and I know if I were unluckier I'd be in your shoes. I really, really hope you're happier and at peace now.
I promise I'll visit you more often.
Maybe I'll read you some of these.
…Or maybe not.
Love,
Zooble