Introductions should start with a name. Most of the time, they are the same: you meet a pony, exchange names, trade some level of polite smile, maybe some casual form of contact between hooves, and then you are considered officially introduced. The thing is, giving my name doesn’t really have much of a point to it. I’m the kind of a stallion that fades into the background, ponies see me and they say “Oh, hey. It’s… that pony,” and then they feel bad about not remembering my name.
Don’t get me wrong, this will be hard if I don’t give something to refer to me by, so we’ll go with "Carter." It’s a very clever nickname developed by the ponies in town. Okay, that’s not fair, but that’s another story in of itself; we’ll get there. The thing is, I’m an earth pony mail carrier. Pegasi are fast and can deliver letters great distances very quickly, but when it comes to delivering sheer numbers of packages in one trip, earth ponies win. The pegasi do the day-to-day mail, and I pull a cart stacked with packages to the different addresses in Ponyville. Of course, pegasi deliver to cloud-borne homes, but in order to deliver them quickly, they have to carry as less per trip. Having pegasi carry packages for the entire town would require an inordinate number of mailponies. So, I pull my cart and carry the packages, it lets me walk all around town and isn't really that bad of a job when you get down to it.
Ponyville is a wonderful town, really. It's filled with the nicest ponies you’ll ever meet. They’re friendly and always willing to greet a familiar face with a smile. That is, until it falters for a half-second because they can’t remember your name. I get it, really. I’m just the stallion that delivers packages, and most ponies don’t think twice about the mail. In cities where the weather patrol is really on point, some ponies can even forget that the weather is controlled by the pegasi. The same thing happens with the mail. After a while, the whole process of mail delivery gets reduced to a thing that just happens. Unless they’re right at the door when I deliver a package, or they regularly take in packages big enough to ensure hoof-delivery, they get used to the gentle knocks only to find a package on their doorstep a few minutes later. It's easy for the concept that a pony is responsible for it to slip from their minds.
The thing is, there’s only so many times that you can be greeted by the same ponies as and have them take on that glassy smile, while they fruitlessly struggle to remember your name, before it starts to get on your nerves. The business owners who regularly receive packages see me quite a bit. Their faces are as easy to read as the large print version of the newspaper. They’ll nod a lot, smile more than they usually do, toss around quite a lot of compliments, all the while trying to coax me to casually say my name so that they don’t have to feel bad about forgetting it.
Pinkie is about the only pony that consistently gets it correct. Pinkie doesn't really count, though, she's, well... Pinkie. I think I’d rather ponies just ask me, but at this point, they probably feel trapped. They’ve been pretending that they know my name and just can’t quite recall it just this moment for too long now. Asking my name would be outing themselves to lying for all that time. I don’t hold it against them, really. They think that it would be acting rude to ask my name. So, in a weird kind of way, they’re just trying to be polite.
Anyway, call me Carter, it’s easier, and it wouldn’t be anything new. I’m not just here to regale on the woes of being a plain-looking earth pony in a town full of earth ponies whose job makes him fade into the background. That’s just so I can lay down the context of the story I’m about to tell. You see, I’ve been told sharing helps to heal wounds, and with that in mind, I’m going to tell the story of the day the sadness died within me.
That’s a dramatic way of putting it, I know, but there’s no real other way to put it. I can’t cry. I can still be sad, but it doesn’t show on my face. It’s not some misguided belief that colts don’t cry, but more that I cannot cry. If I get very upset, my eyes will water for a second and then suddenly stop. I forced myself to stop crying one day, only to find later that I could not undo it. I put on a stoic mask made of stone, but now I’m unable to remove it. It is not an experience that I would recommend, but I’m sharing today, that’s the whole point. Let me explain how it happened.
In order to fully tell the story, as with many stories, I need to take several steps backwards. First I need to explain why I became a mailpony in the first place. The easy answer is that it’s a flexible job. As long as I get all of my packages delivered by the end of the day, how long I take on the route is irrelevant. Basically, it’s a job that allows me to change my route up. I needed a job with a flexible schedule since I lived with my parents to help take care of my sick father. My mother is a strong mare, she has been and always will be, but she’s very good at stressing herself out.
Sometimes I’m surprised that stressing herself out isn’t her special talent, but how would that be reflected in a cutie mark? I’m not really sure, but that’s not the point. My mother could have handled everything on her own, but I didn’t want to make her. My sisters had long since moved away, carrying on with their own lives and chasing after their dreams. So, it was just the three of us when Dad fell ill. Well, I was actually living in my own little bachelor pad on the outskirts of Ponyville when I heard the news. I decided to move back home and pick up the job as a mailpony because it allowed me to stop back and home and see if Mom needed anything a couple of times throughout the day.
Basically, since my job had me walking all over Ponyville, anyway, I was able to help her out by running errands and taking stress off her back. The job was great at first, I got to walk all around town and see all of the ponies. The wonder was still fresh in my mind, but six years later when my father died, everything had long since started to grate on me. It’s not like I stand out a whole lot to begin with, but there’s something about a pony pulling a cart in a farming town that makes them fade into the background. Nopony pays attention to a familiar face trudging along with a cartload of goods behind them.
When I started the job and moved back home, I still had friends. I still went out and did things every now and then, but as the job and the stress of my father’s illness started to grate on me more, I found myself taking it out on them. It wasn’t fair to them, so after a while, I just stopped imposing my presence on them. The friends that I made after taking the job as a mailpony seemed to take the sudden withdrawal the hardest. Roseluck for instance, constantly gave me sad looks whenever I delivered packages to her place after the sudden shift.
She’s the only pony that can call me Carter without causing a slight twinge of annoyance on my part. She’s the originator and it started off as a light-hearted joke. She’s self-admittedly horrible with names and told me straight up the first time that we met that she would forget my name. She then gave me a bright smile and asked if she could just use a nickname instead. She was so much better at remembering nicknames, she explained. So, that’s how I gained the moniker Carter. After a while, other ponies heard her calling me that, and it just spread. It was enough to almost make me smile when I heard her say it after I withdrew, but then I heard the way that she said it and it triggered a sadness inside of me that made it difficult for me to face her. The way that her face fell when she used the nickname, a former cause of mirth now lost, as well as the way her voice trailed off. I could hear her expressing the wish that whatever we had before wasn’t lost, but it was too hard to respond to. Perhaps we could have been happy together once, but it’s probably too late for that now.
Where was I? Right, I eventually withdrew to the point where my life was just the mail, errands, and my mother. It sounds odd, but Dad didn’t play into it a whole lot. I love him and all, but she took care of him and I took care of her. I dragged her out and forced her to do something fun every now and then or even just to go for a walk so she would get out of the house. Dad would always make up an excuse as to why he couldn’t go, not wanting to slow us down, but would give me a knowing smile as we left. He was a smart stallion and picked up on the way that our relationship dynamic had changed. He couldn’t take Mom out and distract her from the monotony and sadness of being a full-time caregiver, so that became my job.
It was easy to explain away to my friends why I couldn’t come hang out anymore. I needed to help my Mom out, or we were going to go out to a movie or some other activity to cheer her up. I was just being the dutiful son, and as my Dad’s condition got worse, it understandably took up more of my time. I think Rose was the only one that saw through the excuses, but she never called me on any of them. Instead, she always just gave me that look with her piercing green eyes. It was clear that she knew what I was doing, but she never told any of our friends. She obviously didn’t agree with my choices by the looks that she would give me, but she kept the secret with me.
So we come, inevitably, to how my father died. It took a lot of ponies by surprise. He was a stubborn pony, he didn’t like to complain, and generally didn’t tell anyone but us when he was in pain. Even then, his usual response was “I hurt” when asked about it. If he ever said anything more than that, then we knew it was serious and rushed to help him. It was our little code, and that stubbornness gave a semblance of normalcy to outsiders. He took walks every day, sometimes he would even do yard work before I could get around to it "just to see if he still could." To everypony looking at us from the outside, Dad was doing great, and they’d often make remarks about how good he looked for being as sick as he was.
One day, though, he complained about pain in stronger terms than “I hurt.” I wasn’t around, so I don’t know what the phrase he used was, but at first nothing seemed out of the ordinary. I came home to check on things and found a note from Mom saying that she had taken him to the hospital to deal with a pain issue. It’d been a while since the last time this had happened, but it was normal enough after six years of similar things happening. I simply went back to work.
It was when I came home to find neither of them home yet, that I knew something was up. But it was late after I finished dinner and the last few chores around the house. If I knew one thing about my Dad, I knew that he’d just yell for disrupting my schedule to see him. So I did everything that I normally would, and by the time I would have been able to visit he would have told me to go home and sleep. He’d probably already told my Mom to go home several times already, only to have her smile and keep sitting there beside him. It was the routine by now, so I made plans to finish my route without any distractions the next day and see what was up.
I wasn’t prepared to be told that they couldn’t do anything more for him by the doctors while my mother sat in his room stoically trying to pretend that she didn’t hear them giving the same practiced speech for the second time. It seemed so unreal; his sickness had just become so normal. After so many years of fighting, the sickness became a part of the day-to-day life. It was jarring to be told that my father was dying. They suggested that they move him to a smaller outside facility that could “make him more comfortable.” I remember that phrase in particular so well.
Apparently he had been not telling us about some fierce pain that had resurfaced for quite some time, and the doctors were amazed that he was still walking. He had even mowed the lawn two weeks before when he knew that I wouldn’t catch him and make him stop. They admitted later that they were pretty much out of treatment options anyway, and that he had lasted several years longer than what they had estimated when he was first diagnosed. We should consider ourselves lucky the doctor said, to have had so much more time with him.
I almost punched the doctor after he said that.
I think the nurse noticed. She came rushing up and dragged him off to some other room quickly. I knew what he meant, but that’s not how it works. You don’t feel lucky that your father is dying. It’s not a happy occasion worthy of celebration. Don’t get me wrong, I hold deep affection for the nurses and doctors who cared for him over the years. They did truly give us more time with him, and I truly am grateful for that, but there’s a time and place to say that kind of thing.
My Dad was beyond words at that point. We talked to him, of course, but he couldn’t respond. Other times when he was in too much pain to respond, he’d give us little nonverbal responses. Some form of acknowledgement that he had heard us, but this time it was different. It was like he was empty. If it weren’t for the pained faces that he’d make any time a nurse had to touch him, I would have thought that he was already dead. He would just lay there, the movement of his chest as he breathed barely noticeable. My Dad was right in front of me, but at the same time so very far away. I nearly cried, but then I saw the look on my mother’s face.
She wasn’t crying, not yet, but I could see that she was hanging over a deep precipice. One little tip and she would be gone. My mother normally wasn’t bashful about crying, it was a source of teasing by my siblings in fact. She wouldn’t hold back and would have to bring tissues to family movies because the sad parts would always get her. But not today, she was holding it back, because she knew once she started she wouldn’t stop and she didn’t want him to hear her crying.
The week and a half between then and when he died seemed to pass in mere days. My mother would spend all day at the house where they were taking care of him. I’d go to work where they piled me with a light workload and then bring her a meal before sometimes taking her home. It was an unspoken agreement between myself and my father. He couldn’t ask me to do it, but he didn’t have to. He didn’t like the idea of Mom staying overnight with him in the hospital whenever she insisted on doing it. He’d always say that she should just get a good night of sleep, and that he’ll be here in the morning. So, even though we weren’t sure of the second part, I took her home whenever she would let me, and sometimes a few times when she put up some resistance. It was routine by then, so we just stuck to it.
I think he was thankful of that, actually. That time was full of ponies that I barely knew, or hadn’t seen in years showing up and visiting my mother. Technically, they were visiting Dad, but they spent the entire time fawning over Mom and making sure that she was alright. They’d offer to do things for her, and she’d always politely decline. The only pony that managed to get her to agree to their help was my aunt, and that was because she showed up the day after Dad died. She’d recently buried her husband, and she helped us through making sure we had everything in order for my Dad. Her help made the whole thing easier on Mom, and I think that’s why she didn’t say no.
The last few days, she had stayed overnight, stubbornly refusing to let me take her home. After a few nights in a row we had a day where nopony showed up from far away to visit with him, so I took Mom home to get a good night of sleep. A pony knocked on our door not even two hours after we left to tell us that he had died. We knew it was coming at that point, he was beyond food. They kept him on an IV but he was unable to feed himself so they focused on keeping his pain low. Knowing my father, he didn’t want her to be there when he finally slipped away. He was stubborn like that.
Mom was a wreck. I wanted to cry. I never got to say a proper goodbye to my father. Sure, we talked to him, but I didn’t get any response, that didn’t count as a real talk. The last interaction I had with him was cracking silly jokes with him on the porch one day during one of my breaks from work. He made a terrible pun and I smacked him across the shoulder for it. He laughed even harder at the reaction than the pun, and that was it. I had to get back to work shortly afterwards and he told me that he loved me. In a way, it was better that way. If he’d been able to speak during that last stretch, then he probably would have said something serious. Asked me to take care of Mom, or tell me that he loved me. I didn’t need to be asked, and I already knew that. I loved my Dad because we got to be goofballs, and at times we annoyed the ever-living crap out of Mom together. If family members heard us getting into a pun war, they’d often make sure they got out of earshot because we judged the quality of a pun by the volume of the groans it elicited and how much somepony wanted to hurt you afterwards.
Some ponies still ask me why I worked through that last week or so where my father was dying, and I would always just shrug. The alternative was never really an option; my dad would have told me to go back to my life if he could. So, I continued in my support role for my mother. I helped her through the funeral and the burial with the help of my Aunt, and stayed at home afterwards. Mom wasn’t ready to be alone yet, so I was happy to give her my company, but the problem was the tears that she had so bravely held back couldn’t be stopped anymore. The strong willed mare that I had known all of my life was a wreck without him. I think that in a way, that she had become used to the illness like I had, and just wasn’t ready for the sudden goodbye. She had temporarily shut off her tears while he was slipping away, but now that he was gone the dam crumbled and it would take a while to hold the waters back.
Everypony from Ponyville that attended the funeral described how it was a shock to them, how he had seemed to be doing so well, and I think my Mom had allowed that hope to foster in her as well. That was when the sadness died inside of me. Watching my mother go from a strong-willed pony that regularly butted heads with my father and won to a weak and completely helpless wreck was too much. I had to make sure she ate for the first month, helping to prepare most of the meals and making sure that she got out of the house. Thankfully, friends stepped up greatly to help with that. My Dad’s boss arranged a schedule for ponies to bring us one meal a day that I could quickly heat up or cook and have a minimal effort, but still well-made dinner.
The problem was, that I never really had a time to be weak myself. My mother needed me almost constantly, and I took quite a bit of time off work to be with her right after he died. I had to become her pillar. I was the only pony that understood what she was truly going through; the only one who knew how much losing Dad really hurt her. So, I put on a stoic mask of strength. I crafted it from the hardest stone that I could find and put my best brave face forward. My role as her support took on a new meaning, and it took over my identity completely. My friends, having become so used to the excuses that came when they invited me out, and seeing that my Mom really needed me, had long since ceased to invite me out with them. So it was just us, and even now that I’ve moved out and mother is doing better, this stone mask that I put on my face, for her sake, just won’t come off.
I had to make it strong to make sure that it wouldn’t slip at the wrong time. The problem is I kept it on so long that it has fused onto my own face. The sadness is still inside of me, but it’s trapped deep inside somewhere that I cannot access it. It’s hidden away, leaving a blank feeling inside of me that I cannot ever hope to describe. I have dreams sometimes where the tears flow freely and I can feel the healing as all of the emotions burst forward, but then I wake up only to find the suffocating mask still tightly attached. I want to be able to break down and sob over how much I miss my father, and sometimes I even have frighteningly real dreams where I’m back home and Dad’s just there. Everything is perfectly normal, but something is so off about these dreams that I always become aware that it’s a dream. As much as I wish it was possible, Dad is gone, and those dreams just feel unnatural, even to my dream-self. A common theme of those dreams is the wish that I could wake up to end the strange and unnatural feeling.
It’s a strange feeling to want to cry, only to be completely unable. The sadness is dead, just like my father, leaving behind a lasting imprint that I know will never leave me. One day, I’ll be a whole pony again, but at least Rose has been giving slightly more upbeat smiles. Until I manage to pry this stifling mask off my face, and find what has been lost, don’t worry about my name.
I realize now that putting this mask on was a mistake. A folly rooted in noble intentions, sure, but a mistake still. My friends and family would have been able to support me. It's too late to reverse the mistake now, though. I’m just that pony that walks through town with his cart. So call me Carter; I’m used to it by now. Don’t feel bad about not knowing my name. Nopony in town except Pinkie ever remembers it, anyway. It doesn’t make me sad anymore, after all, the mail is just a thing that happens. It’s all too easy for me to fade into the background, and until I can rediscover myself, maybe that’s best for all of us.
Author's Note
I don't normally do Author's Notes, but this is important enough that I'll put it here instead of burying it in the comments. This story is not quite a self-insert, but the character of "Carter" is loosely based on a person that I used to be. The parts about my father's sickness, the lead-up to his death, and the way that it affected my mother are all true. It was very difficult watching him like that, but beyond that most of the story has liberal amounts of creative license.
I miss my dad, but I'm beyond the point where it haunts me. He would want me to remember what he'd done for me and keep the good parts in my thoughts, not focus in on the fact that he's gone or how much I miss him. I was unsure if I was going to release this or not at first, but now I think it's important to share. Things never got quite as bad for me as shown in this story, and hopefully others will realize that they will always have someone to go to so that they don't even come close. If you ever find yourself even approaching a situation like this, reach out to your friends. They can and will help you.
-Kal
