5:50 a.m.

am I comfortable in silence? or is it eating me alive?

Somedays, it feels like I’m looking at a winding clock. I keep waiting, and waiting, for the big hand to point to 7, but it always skips right past it. The little hand follows. On and on it goes, making a constant ticking sound.

In the presence of time, I realize I have no idea what to do. When I am confronted with the passing of it or lack thereof – when I am aware it’s moving, I get stuck.

Confronting your existence and imagining you’re following a solitary string that will soon reach its end is terrifying. How many times a day are you meant to confront the face of your life – the one which you would not like to meet – and the one that looks like you?

I am speaking in riddles these days.

I don’t know why it’s so hard to believe I’m not seventeen anymore. I don’t understand why it costs me my breath to admit I will soon be twenty. I am not afraid of it any less than when I was seventeen. It’s approaching, however; and the reminder of it is always sticky in my mind.

The truth – the most honest version, at least – is that I think my life is shaping up to be what I want to be. And I’m not terrified.

I looked in the mirror, for the first time, and examined all the cuts and bruises. I looked at the lines on my ribcage, and the fat on my hips. I touched the scar on the inside of my lip and played with the scissor marks on my arms. Up and down the lines went. Curvy, straight, jagged, uneven. I took the tip of my finger and dragged it along the top of my teeth. Once, twice. I touched the braces in the center, the flushness of my cheeks.

I think I am an ugly thing, mostly because I am honest. All my humility is just a fear of perfection. I apologize as much as I do because I am trying to make up for the fact it’s me. But I am grateful I am an ugly thing. I am thankful that I’m not perfect, because perfect is unsustainable. It’s exhausting.

My advice: forget about the idea of time and stare at yourself in the mirror. Play with the scabs in your heart, pick at the skin.

My teenage years were winding. Steep in their descent, bent on the uphill. I sat down one night and realized I had made a mess of myself willingly. Who was I meant to confess it to but the face in the mirror?

But, I think the bravest thing I’ve ever done is own up to the mistakes I made.

When I told my mom what was going on inside me, I was surprised when she looked back and held my hand. She told me that she’ll love me regardless of my mistakes. Some nights, she hardly sees them. Some nights, she tells me to stop picking at them and embrace the fact it's over.

I told her about my summer and the following fall and the fear that crawled in my throat. I cried in the bathroom and she picked me back up. I cried at midnight when the world was asleep, and she told me to leave the drinks alone. She wouldn’t let me pick up the phone. She won’t let me go back to the past.

I think my mom is more scared of life than me. I think she has every right to. Life has been unkind, and she, most of all, has been unkind to herself. But she won’t let me be consumed by cruelty.

I think she knows me more than I thought, too. The day after I told her about everything (all the good and the bad and the wrong and the right) she cupped my face in her hands and I felt nine again. She told me I couldn’t keep trying to save everybody. Even if it’s me, she seemed to say.

I felt crazy. How did she know? Did she see the guilt all over me, washed in hues of orange and red? Did she see it in my face? Did she see the outline of my heart, bruised in black and blue, and see the cut along the seams? No. It wasn’t that she could see me, necessarily. She saw herself.

The fear of never being good enough. The fear of never living up to your promises. All my set of noncommittal traits. The way I run from love after picking it up only to go back and let it collide into me. The way I give and give and give. The way I can’t hate anybody even if I tried.

When she broke up with her partner, and I held her hand, I saw that we were just mirrors of each other. All the good and the bad is just us. I am her as much as she is me.

What do I remember about love? I know I shouldn’t stay where I’m not wanted. But what is love if not trying to save somebody else from themselves? How can I love when I am stuck there: trying to save and rescue?

I thought I knew what love wasn’t. But just because you know what it isn’t, it doesn’t mean you know what it is.

JANUARY 10:04 PM

I don’t know why certain things happen the way we do. Some days, it’s like the world operates in another world I don't live in; one I don't want to belong in. I don't feel lonely. I enjoy my solitude now, but I can't grasp the other world, the one in which you’re in, the one I can't reach anymore. I feel so apart from your world it’s hard to believe I was once in it.

Sometimes, I remember how my words were slanted and slightly crooked. In the thin veil of the night, when only you and I were awake, we talked about the life we wanted and the childhood we had. We talked about the tips of the knife, where the blade had touched. I pointed at my ribs and then at my hands and my stomach, and then I told you how I dug it into my heart. You dug the blade into my throat, my neck, my legs. I told you where things hurt, a little afraid, a little uncovered, but never fully open. I never trusted you wholly with it. I don't think I'll ever trust someone enough for that.

But I got close. I imagined what it could be like. I kept the imagination in my head. I think I don't know a lot of things. But when it comes down to it, I am more sacrificial than I thought. I'm behind a looking glass; behind a wall; behind a veil.

What secrets have I told you? None that mattered, I realized. Because if I had, I would've told you that there was a boy who didn’t have to tear me open to see me. There was a boy who I didn't need to open myself to. And I only saw it when the lights were down, and the music was loud, and when we existed in some other pocket universe — not in this one. Not wherever we are. I would tell you that when you meet someone like that, by the time the ending comes, you will learn exactly what kind of person you are, because they unearthed you, top to bottom, inside out, all without trying. It's very strange.

I never pointed at the spot on my waist where he put his hands. I never told you about the pain in my head and my stomach, where I laid my forehead on his shoulders, cheek to his shoulder blade, or where I felt his hands when I saw him again and he hugged me and his eyes looked like stars. I never told you about that pain.

And later on, when the next boy comes, I won't tell him about the pain on my fingertips, where I touched your face. Cupped around your cheeks, like you were the only thing in my line of sight. I won't tell them about the pain in my neck, where I could feel you breathe at night. I won't point to the bruises on my legs, where I thought you could be more than what I saw. I won't point to the bruises on my heart. And most importantly, what I will hide from the whole world is that you still live there. Concealed, under the ribcage, below the bones, underneath the vein. You might be intangible now, but you’re still there.

I am a sentimental young woman, but I am realizing that I hide more than I show. I have more secrets than I thought. I will never share a lot of them, and I will never tell you any of them either. In the brunt of my depression, when it was getting bad, I didn't know how to ask you if you would still love me when my brain didn’t. Do you love me still? Did you love me at all?

I think you wanted to love me and couldn’t. Because what I know now is that love is easier than you think. Love is slow, and once it’s there then it's unnoticeable. Love is not affliction. Love is not quiet, even in the silence. What I never told you either, is that he was the one who showed me what love looks like, I guess. Even when it hurts. Because, sometimes, he would look at me like he wanted to say something but couldn’t, or like he wanted to stay and didn’t know how to ask, or like he wanted to hug me but couldn’t find how to. I felt immobile in that way too, because when we were in his car, I wanted to invent new words just to talk to him.

Love is not just sex. Love is more than that. I don't know if you know that.

But you never looked at me like that. And you hugged me, but I didn't feel you tremble. You gave me your heart and I wasn't scared of it. And maybe that means something — I don't know anything for sure.

What you haven’t felt yet is selfishness – at least until now. You don’t understand what it was like to be under the waves, approaching the shore, and swimming back. I never did it with you. I never showed you how reckless I can be. Even with my body, my hands, my love. I never showed you how selfish love can make me act. It looks a lot like fearlessness, but it’s more arrogant than anything.

I never drank to fill a void with you, and the one time I did, it wasn’t because of you, not really. On that night, I had already lost you, and I knew that. But if I was like before — I would've gone over and tried to fill myself up with weed and laughter and tried to drink you down and wash you out with distractions from other people.

Do you know what that's like? Trying to stifle the noise in your head makes you make a lot of mistakes. It makes you dance with boys you don’t want to dance with, and laugh with girls you don’t even know. It makes you seek an explosion just to avoid careening into what you feel and how you’re helpless against it. I never took anything seriously quite after that — not even my heartbreak.

I thought you were different, and you were. You were no explosion; just barren. You’re a dry kind of person. You carry an illusion of depth because when I sank my hands in, up to the wrist, there was nothing. Everything you are was because of me, because before — you were clean. There were no mistakes. No errors. No selfishness. No greed. No desire in the face of blanketed fervor. You were a clean slate of a person whose life was dictated by fear and pain more than freedom. The noise in your head was dull. You were just grey. If you are anything different now, it’s because of me. You took that from me. I gave you most of it.

He was firework and flame. I held my breath around him. I held the inside of my heart. I never gave it to him, not like I gave it to you, but he didn’t need to take it — he already saw it. All the murky, shallow, vain, and ugly parts of it. All my fears. All my dreams. All that wounded me. And I don’t know how he saw it — I don't know how I saw it in him, either. To him, I was transparent. To me, he was clear. And it was great until it wasn’t and I couldn't read him anymore.

But I never told you that. So you think I just fell in love because I was small and stupid, and not because he was the only person that understood me without me having to explain anything. He was the only person that opened me up without trying. All my fear was just because I wanted to give more.

How do you know when you love somebody? I can't tell you that. I don't know, I can't tell.

I'll bury my love with a hatchet when I have to.

Some days, I feel used. Some days, I think I gave my body to the wrong person. Some days, I hate you more than I remember you. But that’s only on some days. It comes and goes. You stay for a while, then leave again.

I keep thinking back and back and back and I don't know why. I am a new person. I left things behind. I left the luggage. But you’re still here, somehow; however small you might be. It’s not like I'm keeping you. I don't miss you all the time. It’s just strange to think I had a life before this and what of it now? Maybe it’s just easier to look back than forward.

I'm scared of what love might look like next. I'm scared I won't be able to trust it. I’m scared I’ll go back to drinking so much I throw up in the mornings, and get used to smoking so much I see static. I'm scared I'm just a shell of noncommittal traits trying to play a role but being terrible at it. I'm scared someone will come in again and see me as a good person only to crush me under the weight of their hand because they think I deserve it; that that’s what I’m worth. I don't want to be cruel, though. I don't want to spit things I can't take back. Not like before —

I will reveal this to you, though, all this stuff I wrote about him, it’s because I’m trying to remember. Because it’s been so long and he’s so different now that I can't. Because I love him and I can't remember him. Because I don't want to forget his voice but I am. I already lost him once and it happened in front of my eyes. I'm losing him again. How do you deal with the loss of memories? When there are only a select few that stand out to you — but that person is gone? And it was partly your fault?

I'm letting go of those years slowly though. I know I have to.