everyone talks to you about things you don't understand. like you're a foreign exchange student who will some day absorb enough scraps to figure it all out. or a dog who never will.
at a bar with L again, you drink cider from cans and throw darts. she asks you questions about college as an attempt to make up for some type of general emotional neglect.
and as you talk you get that sense, like when a memory moves over that grey line from being a memory to just a memory of a memory - you look back and suddenly it's only there behind a foggy haze of abstraction. not that you don't remember it anymore but as you dredge it up for the first time in months it suddenly doesn't feel like it means anything to you anymore, like it's someone elses memories that you just still know how to talk about through some residual process. the story is still lodged there somewhere but you're missing the emotional conclusions attached. that's why you tried to write your essay six months ago, because you knew that everything flowed through your fingers like this and that now when you look back on V's comments, the ones telling you to flesh the scenes out into something with real depth, you won't be able to anymore, won't remember what any of it meant.
an attempt to resolve this three weeks before: you try to ask V to list your personal attributes. identity being socialized, you just need to hear people say it back to you, and it'll all make sense again. she laughs and won't do it. thinks you're just being vain. if so, you need to work on a more focused vanity.
you're glad to be free but still can't see the way out. you aren't sure how to right the ship.
a plot is consequences that lead to more consequences.