Suddenly Some Sunday Mail

corgis

 

Dear Suddenly,

I was kickin’ it on my couch with my laptop stationed on my lap and reading some essays I have been requested to edit and suddenly I realized how much I hate you. Suddenly, I saw how often writers use you as a transition and I suddenly despised every sentence in which you have ever been included. I got to thinking about my own writing and suddenly realized how lucky I have been to have slowly distanced myself from you.

This separation wasn’t intentional, but at some point in my writing career I did, indeed, suddenly stop including you in the collection of words I use to create sentences. As in, there was an essay I wrote with you in it, and then suddenly there were no more essays I wrote with you in them. I got to thinking more about my past writing and considered how at one point, Suddenly, I considered you the paragon of transition. How else can the reader be so suddenly surprised if not for you?

Suddenly, my partner returned home from work, breaking the tirade I was having about you in my head. I wasn’t startled by his entrance, but a second ago I was the only person home and then suddenly I wasn’t any more. My mental rant was so suddenly halted by the entrance of another person into my apartment, I was jolted away from my subjective opinion of you and became curious about your definition.

As I’m writing this, I suddenly put my pen down to look up your definition.

Suddenly: (adj) something occurring without warning or without transition from the previous form, state, etc.

And then suddenly my mother called me. We talked for a while until I suddenly didn’t feel like talking to her, said I had to go, hung up the phone and returned my attention to you.

Even after reading your definition and the ways in which you can be used, the fact that I suddenly hated you that had hit me while I was kickin’ it on my couch still stands. So, Suddenly, I now find myself looking up your synonyms. Abruptly, quickly, swiftly all sound better to me than suddenly inserting you into a sentence. And so now, Suddenly, I have officially banned you from my writing.

Sorry if this feels so sudden,

Chelsey

 


Chelsey Clammer received her MA in Women’s Studies from Loyola University Chicago, and is currently enrolled in the Rainier Writing Workshop MFA program. She has been published in The Rumpus, Atticus Review, and The Nervous Breakdown among many others. She has won many awards, most recently the Owl of Minerva Award 2014 from the women’s literary journal Minerva Rising. Clammer is the Managing Editor and Nonfiction Editor for The Doctor T.J. Eckleburg Review, as well as a columnist and workshop instructor for the journal. Her first collection of essays, There is Nothing Else to See Here, is forthcoming from The Lit Pub, Fall 2014. You can read more of her writing at: www.chelseyclammer.com.


 

Chelsey Clammer
Chelsey Clammer is the author of the award-winning essay collection, Circadian (Red Hen Press, 2017) and BodyHome (Hopewell Publications, 2015). Her work has appeared in Salon, The Rumpus, Hobart, Brevity, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, The Normal School and Black Warrior Review. She teaches online writing classes with WOW! Women On Writing and is a freelance editor. Her next collection of essays, Human Heartbeat Detected, is forthcoming (Fall 2022) from Red Hen Press. www.chelseyclammer.com

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