By Kelly Flynn
Being able to categorize and appropriately label things is comforting to most people. Tatiana Ryckman’s genre bending novella, I Don’t Think of You (Until I Do) does not allow its reader to neatly place it in a particular box. The novella, equal parts prose poem and traditional fiction narrative, is an extended meditation on love, heartbreak and the complications that come along with it. The story follows the beginning of a long-distance relationship through the disintegration of that relationship and finally to its ultimate end.
The unnamed and gender anonymous narrator initially struggles with differentiating love from obsession but seems to ultimately reconcile the two emotions as not being mutually exclusive. In one of most powerful passages, Ryckman has the narrator tell a story about a woman who constantly talks about her dead son. When the narrator one day meets the woman’s daughter, the narrator is surprised to learn that this daughter even existed and writes of their love interest: “You were my dead daughter — there was no room in my sorrow for anyone else.”
From the beginning, the narrator also struggles with insecurities. To the narrator, the relationship with the also unnamed and gender anonymous love interest always feels fragile and in danger. These moments are where Ryckman really excels in showcasing complicated emotions. It is easy for readers to find insecure, unhappy characters to not be compelling, or even irritating. Ryckman avoids this trap by making the narrative self-aware. That self-awareness allows a reader to identify with the narrator.
Throughout the novella, Ryckman also shows us how personal struggles with depression and anxiety can complicate an already failing relationship, without naming either by name. The narrator mediates extensively on the contours of sadness and it’s debilitating impact: “Alone in bed I’d say, I’m dying, over and over again. But nothing happened… I was dying while making breakfast and that turned into dying while washing dishes which turned into dying while in the shower and then dying in the bed again….”
It would be easy for a longer form work fixated on a failing relationship to become exhausting, but Ryckman has the vocabulary to make it possible for the narrator to express their feelings in new and nuanced ways throughout the work. Ryckman also successfully swifts between memories the narrator has of the love interest and how that fixation on the idea of this person is impacting the narrator. Ryckman’s ability to move the narrative at the exact right moments before the reader grows exhausted of the obsession is of a great benefit.
Love and heartbreak are not conceptually unique topics, but that is part of the strength of Ryckman’s novella. The feelings Ryckman describes are universal yet explained using new and fresh language. With its lyrical language and focus on exploring complex emotions from multiple facets, I Don’t Think of You (Until I Do) is both a stunning and compelling work.
I Don’t Think of You (Until I Do)
Tatiana Ryckman
Future Tense Books
ISBN: 978-1892061812
