A funny thing happened a couple weeks ago. Amy Thomas wrote me an email. Turns out, there’s another writer named Amy Thomas. She’s an expat, living in Madrid and discovered me doing a Google search.
There’s yet another writer named Amy Thomas who lives in Australia. The website Muck Rack has mashed our bios together. Suddenly, my pieces on Paris and croissants are peppered with those on Queensland politics and education (which is cool, it’s just not me).
The Amy from Madrid and I had a fun email exchange, which reminded me of the first time I realized that were other Amy Thomases out there. It was after moving to San Francisco and people still used landline phones and dialed information for numbers. That was how I discovered there was another Amy Thomas in San Francisco, and it blew my mind. Up until then, I thought I was wholly original. That there was only one Amy Thomas.
The exchange also reminded me of a pivotal life event: meeting my best friend of 34 years on the first day of seventh grade. We were sitting on the gym bleachers during roll call. She sat in front of me, pretty blonde hair—with a tail, which was pretty exotic in our small Connecticut town. After the teacher called my name and I responded with my dutiful “Here,” she turned around and said: “Your name is Amy? My name’s Amee, too!”
Amee has been like a lighthouse ever since, guiding me, supporting me, helping to illuminate life’s issues and my own struggles with them. We laugh, cry, dance like goons, reminisce, dream about the future, commiserate, bolster, shop, eat, drink, have sleepovers—all of it. As we used to say, Friends Forever!
With the time that has opened up to me as a freelance writer, I read, listen to podcasts and putter around my apartment, digging into old books, journals, boxes and other places where memories hide. I wonder if there are lines between these dots to draw: the random email of another writer. Pondering my name, my identity, what I’m doing with my life. Coming across old photos. Remembering the starts of lifelong relationships.
I’m at a point where I’m wondering what the next chapter will look like. If there is a radical change on my horizon. I can feel things shifting but I don’t know exactly how or what form ‘the next thing’ is taking. I sit in this magnificent, fucked up universe and just wonder. And wonder.