Previously on Imagined Dialogue For…
INT. DAY. OFFICE.
SMILING EMOJI: Patrick’s out today. Do you know if we still have a team meeting at 10?
SUNGLASSES EMOJI: Yeah, I assume so.
SMILING: Ok cool. How was your weekend?
SUNGLASSES: Not too bad. Um, God, what did I do…
SMILING: Haha that wild of a weekend, huh?
SUNGLASSES: Haha, right?
SMILING: Mine was pretty tame. Caught up on Game of Thrones.
SUNGLASSES: Oh, I had a couple friends from college in from out of town. We closed down Sullivan’s last night.
SMILING: Oh man, really? You have more energy than me.
SUNGLASSES: Little worse for the wear this morning though. One big change I’ve noticed in my 30s is that hangovers hurt less on a physical level and more on an emotional or psychological level.
SMILING: Oh God, absolutely.
SUNGLASSES: Like, if I’ve had more than, say, three drinks and less than seven hours of sleep, the anxiety the next morning just skyrockets.
SMILING: It’s awful. Almost makes me miss college when I could just puke once and then go to class or whatever.
SUNGLASSES: Like, it’s not worth it. I don’t know why I do this to myself.
SMILING: Alas…
SUNGLASSES: I think I might just go home sick. I don’t really have anything except the team meeting. I can do a couple things at home.
SMILING: You totally should. Sleep it off.
INT. DAY. OFFICE LUNCH ROOM.
SUNGLASSES: I really need to start a 401k…
SMILING: Right, but—
SUNGLASSES: It’s just hard when, like, living expenses are so much.
SMILING: My dad keeps bugging me about it though.
SUNGLASSES: I finally had to tell my brother to drop it. I had to be like, “Look, I know you have your shit together and everything, but living in Toledo is different than living in a major city. It just is.”
SMILING: Totally different.
SUNGLASSES: We make about the same but I have, like, so much less to work with.
SMILING: I’ve been thinking about breaking up with Shelly.
SUNGLASSES: Oh wow.
SMILING: Yeah, I don’t know.
INT. NIGHT. SULLIVAN’S.
SMILING: So anyway, we just left it at, we’d take a break and do some soul searching or whatever and talk again in two weeks.
SUNGLASSES: How are you feeling about it?
SMILING: I honestly don’t know. I mean, I love her. I just don’t know what’s going on anymore, to tell you the truth.
SUNGLASSES: Can I be completely honest with you, man?
SMILING: Yeah, of course.
SUNGLASSES: I really don’t like my life. Like, at all.
SMILING: I actually wake up every morning scared of the future. How insane is that?
SUNGLASSES: My dreams feel more real than my reality sometimes. It’s hard to describe.
SMILING: I saw the most insane road rage incident the other day.
SUNGLASSES: I actually don’t want to hear about it.
SMILING: Oh I’m sorry.
SUNGLASSES: No, that stuff just upsets me. Adulthood, being grown up, whatever you want to call it—it wasn’t supposed to be like this.
SMILING: If you could go back in time and visit yourself as a child, what would you tell yourself?
SUNGLASSES: Give up everything and move into a tiny shack in the woods in complete isolation and spend the rest of your life there.
SMILING: One hundred and ten percent.