the quiet terror of being alive.

ACT I — In which we’re not very honest with each other: you say you like me and then you can’t make up your mind so I pretend like I don’t care and go get high with my friends instead, and you love to see me sad and broken for you so you try to kiss me at the end of the night as I look up to you with dilated pupils and eyes painted black, my mouth tastes like paint and cheap wine, my words are frantic. You mistook my flailing arms, my spiraling downwards, for doomed, tormented love and you liked the idea of it. ACT II — In which you know all the right words to say and I fall for it: you come looking for me and play me my favorite song the one that goes it’s not like I’m falling in love I just want ya to do me no good. Say you don’t quite know what this feeling is but you know it’s big and scary and beautiful, I choose to believe and forgive you for never giving me peace of mind as we look at the strawberry moon rising on the sea. Your hand underneath my baby blue dress, I teach you how to smoke, a big sign on the highway reads YOU’RE ON THE RIGHT WAY. ACT III — In which it all comes burning down: in that very same spot you said you cared, but life’s no easy feat and you knew I was the only one who understood it (that is why I forgave you that is what you liked about me) we now sit in silence and I can’t look at you and I can’t speak and can’t move all I can do is smoke a stupid lucky strike. You say you’re sorry and keep saying it over and over I won’t believe you, you’re the villain of the story, struggle against your grip torn between breaking free and clinging to your arms one last time. Yet I keep hoping for a last kiss, a hint of doubt, but your asymmetric gaze won’t even meet mine. ACT IV — In which I willingly choose to expire: I down all my Chianti and Xanax, stay up until dawn and fuck strangers, read beautiful heartbreaking literature, hoping it’ll somehow get you back to me. I look for you in all the wrong places just to tell you please come back. I’ll be sadder, this time, just like you like it, be less boring, be wilder. The audience begs for a happy ending, but what’s a happy ending to me is not a happy ending to them. In a shocking plot twist, you’re fine by yourself and I really am the villain of my own story.

How many more times will I have to be the girl who isn’t liked enough, but you like hanging out with her so you want to stay friends, the one who’s so cool she didn’t even tell me to go fuck myself, a real good one, the one who never makes a scene, who has no dignity and never takes anything personally, so you know you can say anything right to her face ‘cause she’ll just stand waiting there like an idiot? I can’t take it anymore, putting up with everything and playing along with it day after day, year after year, boy after boy is becoming an insurmountable challenge for me. And it’s slowly eating away at that part of me who’s a child and still wants to believe there’s some good in everything. My epitaph will read: 'if only you’d been less of a nihilist slut'. Another day, another door slammed in my face. Living with the awareness that there’ll always be a missing piece hurts so much that I don’t even want to keep going, right now. That’s it, I’m tired. What’s the purpose of all this? And still, I don’t have the courage it takes to ever go all the way. Don’t disappear, I said to him. Perhaps, though, I could be the one who disappears. Bit by bit, I could become so small I take up no more room, considering the little space I fill now is wasted anyways. I always only make mistakes. And still, I know that deep down inside I don’t want to change to appease others more, I know I was never a natural at playing games, elaborating strategies. And yet no one seems to understand this, except for Al who doesn’t even try to give me advice anymore because he knows I always ask for it but I never follow through. Alcohol and understanding, that’s all I need right now. I just wish I could rewind the tape back to the last time I was happy and innocent, how many years ago was that? Who knows, it might be even more that a decade, back when everything was still undiscovered and unseen, and my life had the potential to turn into anything, rather than the tragicomic story it is now, back when I did not yet know that if you throw yourself at the world the world is going to hurt you. On that white gravel street which stretched form my grandparents’ house to the local church, it used to look so long to me, with our german shepherd always by my side and no awareness of the future, now that’s where I would like to go back to. Because the future looks to me now like a mixture of struggles, failures and remorse. I wish I could turn into dust and float up in the air, escape my own body and never return. To be normal, just for once, and know how it feels. I wish I didn’t have that doomed strain of optimism that always makes me cling to everything and everyone, I wish I was more cynical, I wish I knew how to handle this better. A poet I love swallowed a bunch of barbiturates in 1950 after what he defined to be fifteen years of failures, perhaps me jumping off the top floor after twenty-two years of misery would not be so out of place. But I know I won’t do it this time, like I didn’t all those times before, although this is the latest reminder that I’ll never be fully happy and there will always be something that’s missing. Why not jump? Perhaps my masochism is so big that I’d rather drag my agony on for seventy more years rather than just end it now. I just wish I could love back those who love me, and stop hoping for the ones who don’t to come back to me. What’s the purpose of all this? There will be a perpetual pain in the background, the knowledge I’ve always messed up and I always will. A bitter last kiss, he said. Everything is so wrong, I’m so terribly, terribly wrong. As I’ve always been. Go fuck yourself, I wish I'd said. But I kissed him back instead.

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT is the question I always asked, mouth gaping ad half asleep on the couch, as a child. Oh how my father hated it! “Watch it and you’ll find out” he’d say, but I knew I had school in the morning and I had to go to bed, so I’d beg him. THEY ALL DIE he’d lie, and I’d get mad. I wanted to know I wanted to be sure I shivered with anticipation at the sight of Russell Crowe in his shiny armor,not a movie fit for a child, that’s for sure. WHAT HAPPENS NEXT I ask standing on the overpass shouting into the night. School’s out for summer school’s out forever and I’m scared I won’t see their faces anymore. The crooked teeth, slightly uneven eyes, freckles and worn out shoes, I’ll wake up tomorrow and they’ll be GONE!! THEY ALL DIED!! But I can’t go to bed now because I have a galaxy to plan out. And I’m no Russell Crowe and my life’s no movie and still my father doesn’t want to answer my question WHAT HAPPENS NEXT he says he doesn’t know. He doesn’t have all the answers. ANYTHING he lies “as long as you’re happy, as long as you’re happy”. But I want to be sure, I shiver with terror at the depth and immensity of my own universe, and the stars and the sidereal cold are big and mean and scary and I wish I could just stay afloat. I’m sorry I forgot your face. It got lost in the struggle of it all.

I think it's funny how we die many times before our deaths. When my grandaunt died a part of me died, too: my 3-year-old self who loved listening to her stories about ordinary life during the War, the little girl who learned how to sew from her. When my german shepherd died, a part of me died, too: my 9-year-old self running circles in a silent backyard resting her head on its stomach on summer afternoons, burying her face in the fur as her parents shouted at each other. When my plant died, a part of me died, too: my 15-year-old self with bangs so long they covered her eyes, pill-swallowing, angry riot girl who only loved Sid Vicious and her cigarettes. And when you left me, a part of me left me, too: the part that likes to wake up early and stay up late, who likes adventures and stupid songs, who is always the loudest in the bunch and isn't afraid to show up uninvited, who can always solve riddles, but could never solve the one hidden behind a pair of green eyes and a worn out blue sweater.

This is the story of a boy and a girl who are on their way home from a party, late at night (or maybe it's morning already but who cares when you're drunk and happy?) The boy and the girl sit on the bus, his tuxedo is drenched with champagne, her dress is soaked in blood from someone's broken nose and as she leans her head on his shoulder she thinks "I am home".

last night, I found love. and before you ask, I didn't find it in you. I found it in Irene's car at 1 a.m., as we were driving uphill cranking the Ramones loud from her car's blown-out stereo. I found it in our hometown seen from above, and in a cigarette burning in the wind. I found it in a group of kids I'd never seen before who were just as restless and lonely as Irene and me, staring at the city lights with the same tired yet glimmering eyes. and before you ask, there's no need to worry: your name still gets my heart racing like no one else's.

But here, the dawn sneaks up on the last day of summer, and as a man with tired hands watches a young couple dance in the carpark of his restaurant, there are only these: sparkling eyes, smudged lipstick, fading stars, the crunching of feet on gravel, laughter, and a slow walk home.

These are the moments that make life worth livin’, you know? Riding Rachel’s motorbike at 3 a.m., Tommy’s bright orange jacket, Irene laughing because she can’t pronounce “Massachusetts” correctly, watching Carl have the time of his life playing football with children at the park, running under the rain with Martha, Alex staring at the sea with his eyes wide with childlike awe, Gene hugging me out of the blue while I’m getting stuff from the cupboard, and the jokes, the stupid little things, beer at four in the afternoon when it’s the end of february and it feels like spring has finally come, and laughing under the drunken stars when summer hits town, and I finally realize it’s worth it, you know the feeling? I mean, realizing that it’s worth all the afternoons spent crying in my bedroom and my mother telling me she hates me and waking up not knowing what my place in the world is. Because I see you and everything else doesn’t matter anymore, because you are the deranged family I never knew I wanted and I feel much more at home sitting with you on a bench on a cold winter night laughing at everything than I’ll ever feel when I’m sittin’ in my bathroom writing “you all suck” in black eyeliner on the tiles and sobbing. Surround yourself with friends, surround yourself with silly jokes and random afternoons and sticky summer nights spent in parking lots and enjoy the little space that’s been given us in this world, and live.

THINGS I WON’T BE ABLE TO TOUCH ANYMORE WITHOUT MY HANDS BURNING (and my heart breaking, perhaps)

He didn’t boxe because he loved it. He wasn’t a real fighter, he didn’t come from the streets. He was a tall, skinny middle-class boy, he wore Levi’s jeans, his eyes were dark and deep like a fucking black hole. And just like a black hole they could suck you in, they lured you like a flame lures a moth. He had a way of looking at you when you crossed paths in the school corridors, and he’d blow you kisses just like the old movie stars, and it made you want to forget about anything that wasn’t him and his goddamn eyes. Plus, he was able to laugh, he could laugh at everything, and even when he’d laugh at you he was so charming you couldn’t get mad at him. He’d laugh at everything or take everything too seriously, that was his problem. It took nothing to light him up, throw punches in the air, glare at the world with his black eyes. That was why he had started boxing. Not because he liked to get his ass on the line in a gym, he had never been a tenacious one, life was a joke to him. He boxed because he needed to, because then he would’ve been able to send every asshole who got close to his girl to the afterlife. The fact that said girl wasn’t you, well, that’s a different story. The fact that he had kissed you that way, the fact that he had looked at you that way, just to get her out of his head, that’s a different story, and it didn’t matter then, because you were the one he had kissed, you were the one who had fallen asleep with stars in her eyes and his taste on her lips. But then, he had stopped blowing kisses. And saying hello. And looking at you. And it felt as if your life had been sucked in by a fucking black hole, as if there was no reason left to do anything, because there was no him. He had gotten her back, that girl, that girl whom he’d fight for, who had broke up with him with a five-minute phone call, but who he loved nonetheless. And you knew you were supposed to be sad, but you couldn’t manage to. You’d see him pass you by completely numb, and all you felt was rage. And slowly, in an almost graceful way, the thought of him had disappeared from your mind. It hadn’t been like the movies, there had been no tears, no running through the streets breathless at night, chased by a ghost. You had simply stopped looking for his eyes. His flame had gone off and the moth had flown away. Some time later, one night, you both were at the same club and you had seen him fighting another guy. That boy was much shorter than him, he was two years younger, and while you were watching the brawl with a dance song playing in the background, as if the world was in slow motion, he had tripped and fallen onto you. Your friends had picked him up, calmed him down. He hadn’t even noticed you. Sometimes, being 5ft2 could be a good thing, you had told yourself. You kept an eye on him for the rest of the night, as he asked everyone for a cigarette and drank a diluted long island, sitting on an old leather sofa. And you didn’t feel anything. Not the pain from his weight which had crushed you ribs that same night, no sadness from the much worse way in which he had crushed your heart, nor compassion, no nostalgia. Not even a little bit of the rage that just like a chain had kept you away from him and from his dark eyes, that you used to love so much and now, swollen and purple-hued, kept glaring at the world as if it were his opponent.

10 things i learned this year

I need to write so I won’t die. I need to write so that all this pain, and rage, all these hopes and doubts won’t disappear. So that all the books, the songs, the movies, the paintings that I love won’t vanish. So that the cigarettes, the dawns, the jokes, the people won’t be forgotten. Because the pain I feel, the rage that burns inside me, the hopes and doubts I have, the books I could quote by heart, the songs I play over and over in my head, the movies I wish my life looked like, the paintings that make me cry, the cigarettes I put off, the dawns I’ve seen, the jokes I laughed at, the people I loved make me who I am. I feel, therefore I am. I perceive, therefore I am. I live, therefore I am. But all of this feeling and perceiving and living and being, what will it mean once the breath is knocked out of my lungs? The wind will sweep the ashtray clean and the sun will set a million times and all my books will rot and the people I love will die, too. And what will be left of me? What if not these empty, shrieking words? I write therefore I am, and will always be.