SICK SAD WORLD

I stood outside, and

swells the ground swells as if someone underneath is punching the earth punching the earth let me out I can’t look at you any-more and the wind blows through the grass like waves, like waves, like undulation and punches, the more I stare, the more I stare at the grass the dizzier I feel, I feel and I see the grass beat, the grass beat into the shape of letters___ 

plane cuts sky like knife, plane is a knife, straight through my brain like a knife cuts through from right ear to left ear and disappears, leaving the sky split in two, my brain split in two, cut by the knife that is the plane, the plane that is the sound, the sound of an aluminum bullet slicing through the sky, the halves of the sky peel apart and out falls the rain___

once more with feeling now, pads on fingertips touch pen grip pen clasp notebook, paper and cold and ink-streaks run rivers because of rain, rain that blows and blows right into my face, it’s mist, it’s a cloud of mist I’m walking into, and I can feel it, feel it as it engulfs my legs, my torso, my extremities and my everything and my brain, and it feels like cold, a cold travels under my skin, spreads out like an ice cube melting under the layers keeping my blood inside me, ice runs through my blood and shoots out frosted spider-webs behind the rosy flesh of my cheeks, and I feel cold, cold, wet, no, just damp like the paper on which I spew scribbled syllables that fall from my numb purple fingertips in just the same way that the misty rain falls from the blinding gray unzipped sky___

inhale wet grass through nose, through mouth exhale carbon dioxide and word vomit, through nose comes the scent of god knows what and it’s a good thing it’s cold and rainy instead of hot and rainy, because in the wet and heavy heat, things swell and saturate and stink more than they normally do, but cold, cold washes away sweat and stench and I’m left with pure green odors of wet grass and the scent of my notebook, which I can smell only if I hold my nose right up to the page and sniff-snort-inhale my own backwards lines, which arguably smell the same as a load of bullshit, but I would prefer to think otherwise___ 

the organ of my stomach is shrunken and the skin stretched over it is concave, rumbling grumbling concave, I taste the air and taste nothing, lick the roof of my mouth and nothing, lick the soft flesh inside my mouth that lines my cheeks, lick my gums, lick the back of my teeth and taste nothing but enamel, and what does enamel even taste like, anyways___

my sixth sense tells me it’s time to go, time to leave so I leave, leave the cold and the unzipped sky and the beating grass, leave the tasteless air and the damp earth, leave my footprints in the dirt, leave the forgotten cap of my pen, leave my words on this page and go___

            It was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, and he couldn’t even tell you what color it was. 

            It turned in the light, reflecting reds, greens, purples – at times, it seemed to simply radiate a halo of gold.  It was iridescent.  Shimmering.  Sparkling.  He could not look away.

            He stared.  Gaped.  Gawked.  He became detached from reality.  From his problems, from his worries, from his humanity.  Nothing else mattered.  Nothing else existed.  His entire life rotated around it.  The entire planet rotated around it.  It was the center of the universe.

            He knew better than to touch it.  He had been warned not to.  But how couldn’t he?  Those who’d told him not to do it had obviously never seen it – or experienced it, for that matter.

            He’d be in trouble if he got caught.  But no – just one touch.  That wouldn’t cause any harm, would it?  There was nothing wrong with just one touch.  He wiped the sweat from his brow.  He licked his dry, cracked lips. 

            The more he stared, the more he longed.  His attraction grew exponentially.  Overcome with desire, he became obsessed.  He needed it.  Needed to touch it, hold it, become it.  His eyes became teary.  His mouth watered.  His fingers itched to grab hold of it and draw it towards him.  He wanted to embrace it.  Cherish it.  To consume it and to be consumed by it. 

            He tried to turn away from it.  He twisted his torso to the left, but his head stayed still, his gaze fixated upon its radiance.  He tried to lift his feet, but they wouldn’t budge.  It was as if he had sprouted roots, planting him firmly into the soft grass beneath him.

            There would be consequences if he gave in – or so he’d been told.  What were those consequences, again?  He racked his brain, trying to remember.  His memory was blank.  He could think of nothing but the object in front of him.

            He looked over his right shoulder, then his left.  No one – neither bird nor beast – was there.  He was completely alone.

            His conscience pounded on the walls of his skull, screaming at him to walk away from it.  But with every second he stayed, he grew more and more distant from the voice inside his head begging him not to do it.

            What was so terrible about it, anyways?  Nothing that beautiful could be that bad.  He tilted his head to the side and looked at it, trying to understand.  But without it, he’d never know, and without knowing, he’d never understand.

            He was desperate.  He had to have it, or he’d die.  That was the answer.  The only way to keep living was to have it.  The curiosity killed him.  He was dying without it. 

            When he couldn’t stand it any longer, Adam reached out and grabbed the apple.

There are more than two hundred types of cancer known to mankind. 

Acute myeloid leukemia, adrenocortical carcinoma, AIDs related cancer, AIDs related lymphoma, anal cancer, appendix cancer, astrocytoma, basal cell carcinoma, bile duct cancer, bladder cancer, bone cancer, brainstem glioma, various brain tumors, breast cancer, bronchial adenomas, burkitt lymphoma, carcinoid tumors, central nervous system lymphoma, cervical cancer, chronic lymphocytic leukemia, chronic myelogenous lukemia, chronic myeloproliferative disorders, colon cancer, cutaneous t-cell lymphoma, desmoplastic small round cell tumor, endometrial cancer.

Esophageal cancer! Eye cancer! Gallbladder cancer! Heart cancer! Lip cancer! Melanoma! Nasal Cancer!

There is literally a type of cancer for every single body part.

I have a lot of body parts, and there are a lot of cancers out there. I start to wonder how the fuck I’ve made it through seventeen years of life without dying. And this slide show they’re showing at the relay is really killing me, because it is giving me the worst survivor guilt I have ever experienced.

As I look at the faces - faces of people who have succumbed to cancer- I really start to hate myself for being alive. 

The people around me sobbing, they kill me. The stupid song that’s playing along to the slide show, it kills me. This track, this turf. Kills me. Every single face in every single picture kills me. 

They all look so happy. Look at them! Happy! And now they’re not here anymore. They’re not here anymore to be happy. And instead, planet Earth is left with ungrateful little shits like me who spend all their free time wallowing in misery and self-pity.

God, I hate the sobbing! I’m not insensitive; I’m not; that’s not it. It’s just that

It’s just that I wish these people would understand. Understand death, I mean. I want to grab the teary-eyed person standing next to me, grip the collar of their shirt, and scream at them to wake up. I want to scream at them and shake them back and forth until they understand. I want to scream at them that the person they’re crying over won’t die unless they let them die. Because that’s the way death really works.

When people die, they don’t really die. I mean, yeah, sure, so they’re not physically here. But they’re not gone.  As long as I am alive, anyone I know who’s ever died will be immortal. 

Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is immortal. Gandhi. Gandhi’s immortal. And Hitler. Hitler is immortal, too. And Julius Caesar and Cleopatra. George Washington. Princess Di. Hell, even Marilyn Monroe is immortal. 

People die once. Their last breath leaves their body. It happens, and that’s, well, that’s the way things go. But they’re still around. They’re still around until the second time they die. And that’s why Jesus and Cleopatra and all of them are immortal - they won’t die a second time. Because people only die a second death the last time someone living thinks about them.

I’ve said goodbye to people I know I’ll never see or hear from ever again. And that sucks, you know, because it hurts when someone’s gone from you. And yeah, they’re still alive, but never seeing or hearing from someone- well, how is that any different from his or her dying?

It’s not; it’s not any different. But that person you’ll never see again is still very much alive to you, as long as you keep thinking about them. And you will, because everybody remembers everybody eventually. At least once, anyways.

So these people - these people watching the faces of their deceased loved ones materialize and then disappear on a white screen in the middle of a football field - I wish they would stop crying. Because we’re all here - hundreds of us - staring at the faces on the screen. And we’re all here - hundreds of us - thinking about the faces on the screen. And in this moment, the faces on the screen are very much alive. And as long as we are alive,

we won’t let them die.

But I notice a slight twitch in my eye, and my nose wrinkles, and I have the urge to sniffle. I want to cry. I want to cry because of the life I’m not living. Survivor guilt is really just the worst when the thing you happened to have survived (so far) is life, and the people you’ve lost number to about a million bajillion. And as I look at all these faces on the slide show, I feel torn, because although I feel guilty as hell, their smiling faces make me want to be alive. More alive than I am, anyways. All I do is float. I float from place to place and pretend I’m nowhere, and that’s hardly living. I watch my life from behind a glass wall. And now I don’t know if I’m supposed to continue drowning in my own guilt or if I’m supposed to melodramatically break the chains that bind me (or whatever) and carpe fucking diem.

But it’s ten-thirty on a Friday night, and I can’t think clearly enough to make that decision right now. I don’t have to make that decision right now. I amhere. Here, on this track, in this town, in this state, in this country, on this continent, on this planet, in this solar system, in this universe. Here, on this track, watching the slide show. And all I need to do right now is live in this moment. All I have to do right now is be here.

I just wish you were here with me.

No matter how hard we try, my family is always late to church. 

My brother’s in New Hampshire with my mother; he’s getting dropped off at summer camp tomorrow. My sister’s out having a social life. My dog is my dog. My father and I are the only ones who go to church tonight.

(Saturday five o’clock Mass is always better than Sunday morning Mass for one reason: It’s not on Sunday morning.)

When we arrive at the church, we have to stand in the vestibule for a few minutes and scan the pews for an empty spot. There’s a space about five rows from the back, and we make our way through the aisle as the organist plays some hymn and a chick sings about Jesus being her rock or whatever.

I hate High Masses. I hate the singing. It makes the Mass take forever. What could be done in totally monotonous speech in five seconds takes about four times longer when you’re singing it. For example, “Alleluia” becomes “aaaAAAAA - llllleeeeeeEEEEEeeee - luuuuUUUUUuuuuu-iaaAAAAAAaaa.” It’s awful.

We’ve already missed the first reading. Doesn’t matter. I’m willing to bet money I don’t have that it was someletter from Saint Paul to the Corinthians and started out with the words “brothers and sisters…”

Besides, we miss the first reading every week. Sometimes we even miss the second one. I’m pretty sure we’re not missing much.

I scan through the first reading anyways. It’s about some prophet being all “I’m too young!” or whatever.

(I know how you feel, amigo.)

I stop paying attention and start thinking about school. All I think is about school. I hate that. I can’t help it. Ten minutes somehow pass, and Father What’s-His-Name moves onto his homily. 

(Or maybe it’s supposed to be a Homily, not a homily. Whatever.)

Ok, so first things first. I like punk music because punk music is political without being in-your-face political. If I disagree with the message in a particular song, then I can just listen to the music instead, and everything’s fine. But when a Catholic priest starts getting political, it’s not as if I can just zone out and listen to the raspy voice of an old man and still enjoy it. 

He starts talking about abortion. Sick. Great. I remember being in eighth grade CCD class, when McCain was running against Obama. Our teachers had one of the priests come in to give us pro-McCain/pro-life pamphlets they wanted us to show our parents. I’m pretty sure I used mine to blow my nose.

Then the priest starts going off about how religious liberties are being threatened. Coming from the Catholic church, that’s

… absolutely ridiculous.

When I see posts on tumblr of photographs of Bibles being burned with the caption “COOL STORY BRO,” that pisses me off, because I find it to be completely offensive. Yeah, the Catholic church can be a pain in the ass sometimes, but that doesn’t mean you can post shit like that. No one on this website would even dare post a picture of someone burning the Qur’an, so what the fuck makes you think it’s okay to do that to the Bible? And I hate when I see pictures of the Pope on tumblr with comments making statements that the Pope should fucking sell everything he has and give it to the poor instead of sitting on his ass on a golden throne. The Pope doesn’t receive a fucking salary, you morons, and furthermore, the Catholic Church is the largest charity in the world. Oh, and the worst is when people say that if the Church REALLY wanted to do good, they would just sell the Vatican and give the money to the starving people of the world.

The Vatican is a COUNTRY. YOU JUST CAN’T FUCKING SELL THE VATICAN.

ok I completely forgot where I was going with this, but yeah, out of all the religions expressed on tumblr, Catholicism definitely takes a serious beating.

Oh, right, I remember where I was going. Despite the fact that a ton of tumblr users give the Church a lot of shit, it’s absolutely ridiculous that the Church is concerned about its religious liberties being threatened.

The priest starts talking about something called the Fortnight for Freedom. He says that the Catholic Church is being threatened by the American government, so the Archdiocese has launched a campaign lasting from this past Thursday to the Fourth of July. (According to one of the information cards I took from the back of the church, the Fortnight for Freedom is “a special time of prayer, fasting, education, and witness for a new birth of religious freedom in our beloved country.”)

The priest continues on to explain that the Fortnight is necessary because of Obama’s statement that insurance plans should cover birth control. He starts going off on how abortion and birth control are SINS, and in promoting birth control, the government is threatening the Catholic religion.

I start to regret going to Mass tonight.

As he continues to talk, my head starts swarming with all the (largely useless) information I know about abortion and birth control. Father What’s-His-Name mentions that the government is somehow violating First Amendment rights of Catholics by doing something that goes against their religion. Roe v. Wade pops into my head. I’m pretty sure banning abortion contradicts the Bill of Rights- there’s some amendment in there that can be applied to the situation and would support the fact that a woman’s body is her own property or whatever, and therefore she has the right to do what she wants with it.

I’m getting sick of this guy’s spiel. I hate this priest and I hate what he’s saying and I want him to shut up.

I wonder why I’m even here. Here in this church, I mean. Religion freaks me out. I’m just another member in one giant cult, worshipping some guy I never met who got crucified that one time. It’s kind of sick, and it’s kind of pathetic.

I don’t know why I’m here.

No, I do know. I’m here because I hate the thought of the dead people I know rotting under six feet of earth in a coffin. I’d much rather envision them sitting on a cloud in Heaven, doing crossword puzzles with Jesus or something. I don’t go to church because I’ve found God; I go because I’m desperately searching for Him. I don’t have anything to believe in anymore, and I need something.

Then, Father What’s-His-Name starts talking about gay marriage.

In therapy, they teach you to be able to notice physiological responses to emotion. As the priest talks about how homosexuality is a SIN and that gay marriage is a SIN, I can feel every single muscle in my body tense up. Heat rises in my cheeks as blood rushes to my head. I start twisting my rings around on my fingers. 

He calls Catholics who support gay marriage and birth control hypocrites. He tells us we are denying God. “You can’t just ignore that entire aspect of Catholicism,” he says.

Actually, I think “sneers” is more accurate. He practically spits the words at us. 

Basically, the rest of his Homily is pretty much along the lines of GOD HATES FAGS AND THERE ARE FAGS EVERYWHERE AND IF GAY MARRIAGE BECOMES LEGAL IN ANOTHER STATE THEN THAT’S A THREAT TO OUR RELIGION. OH AND ABORTION IS ALSO BAD AND IF YOU USE BIRTH CONTROL YOU WILL GO TO HELL.

I want to leave. I don’t give a shit about God anymore; the only thing I give a shit about is getting out of this fucking church. But I’m stuck and can’t go anywhere. I can’t make a scene. That would humiliate my father and bring dishonor to my family or some other weird Asian shit like that. So I stay put.

When the homily - oh, sorry, the Homily - is over, the organ starts playing again, and we all have to line up and eat the Jesus Cookie - I mean, the symbolic flesh of the Messiah. (Fuck, I am definitely going to Hell.)

When I get to the front of the line, Father What’s-His-Face holds up the Eucharist (oh right, that’s what it’s called) in front of my face and says, “The Body of Christ.”

I try very very hard to resist smacking him.

“Amen,” I say. He places the Jesus Cookie in my hands, and I eat it.

I want to spit it out. I hate that it’s in my mouth. I never hated the Catholic Church quite so much. I used to be a pretty liberal Catholic - you know, interpreting the religion in my own way so that it fit with my personal beliefs as well. But according to the priest, that makes me a raging hypocrite and an insult to my own religion. So I guess maybe I’m not a Catholic, then. There’s got to be some type of other Church out there for us hypocrites, because I can’t deal with this shit anymore. 

I swallow the Jesus Cookie. I hate that now it’s stuck inside my stomach.

I am infuriated that the Church is using freedom of a religion as a method of discrimination. It’s backwards, and it’s sick. The religious liberties of the Church aren’t being threatened. It’s the Church itself who’s doing the threatening of liberties, and that pisses me off. Yeah, we have freedom of religion, and that’s great and all, but freedom of religion doesn’t give a religion the freedom to fucking shove its beliefs down other people’s throats and deny civil liberties to those whose beliefs or lifestyles don’t agree with that religion’s. Religion should not justify being a total dick to people.

I start walking to the back of the church. When I get to my pew, an old woman steps aside to let me enter it, but I continue walking all the way to the very back of the church. Out of habit, I dip my fingers into the bowl of Holy Water and make the Sign of the Cross. I immediately hate myself for doing that.

I walk out of the church. 

I probably won’t be going back there for a while.

The trouble with having no friends is that you never have anything to do on Saturday nights.

My little sister is off with her friends at some event in New Jersey. My parents and brother are at a pig roast barbeque in Connecticut (how extravagant). I’m at home, sitting on the couch in front of the TV watching a documentary about Helvetica.

It’s not the most fascinating thing in the world, but the only semi-decent movie on television tonight is Bravo’s airing of Hannibal, and there is no way in hell I’m watching that.

My level of fear is inversely proportionate to the number of people at home.

So basically, tonight, someone will break into my house, rape and mutilate me, kidnap me and throw me in a potato sack in a trunk, take me into the middle of the woods, rape and mutilate me some more, and then eat me alive. And then I’ll be reincarnated into a surfer and get eaten by a shark.

I mean, it’s entirely possible. 

Before he left, my father opened up a few windows in the house to “get some ventilation.” As soon as the car pulled out of the driveway, I had all those windows shut and locked faster than you could say “Son of Sam.”

I’m too afraid to go to the bathroom, because the bathroom on the f

FUCK
WHAT WAS THAT
HOLY SHIT I THINK I JUST HEARD SOMETHING

ok
my dog’s not barking, so I must have imagined it-

anyways, I’m too afraid to go to the bathroom, because the bathroom on the first floor is directly across from the door to the basement. There is NO WAY IN HELL I’m getting anywhere near that basement. I refuse to drink any water for the next five hours. If I have to pee, I’m going to go into the kitchen and piss in a fucking pot or something.

And the phone. GOD FORBID THE PHONE RING, for two reasons: One, my internet will go out, because the internet is connected to the phone line, and right now, the internet is my only connection to the outside world (and potential help when the serial killer comes), as I don’t have any cell phone service here, because my middle class, white neighborhood is in the middle of goddamn nowhere. Two, IT COULD BE A SERIAL KILLER CALLING.

But I always keep the phone right next to me, so that I’ll have it to use to call my parents and tell them I love them one last time before a psycho

HOLY SHIT I THINK I SAW A SHADOW IN THE REFLECTION ON THE TV SCREEN

HOLY FUCK

HOLY MOTHER OF GOD

PRAY FOR ME GUYS

…ok 

My dog still isn’t barking. Good. Shit, I am going absolutely crazy.

When I was walking home from my haircut today, I decided to cut through the back parking lot of the high school I live next to. I was about a quarter of the way across the parking lot when I saw this guy leaning up against his motorcycle. I got super freaked out, but he saw me, and I felt super uncomfortable and figured it was too late to turn back, so I walked past him as quickly as I could and tried not to look at him for any amount of time longer than a standard glance. He looked pretty normal and whatever - he was just leaning against his bike, smoking, and then I noticed he was holding a fucking syringe. A MOTHERFUCKING SYRINGE.

Anyways, I was getting super paranoid at that point, and after I walked past him, I was too scared to look back. I finally got to the part of the parking lot where it slopes down to the lower lot. I turned to look back, and because of the angle of the hill, he was out of sight. I was relieved, because that meant he couldn’t see me anymore.

Then, I heard the engine of his motorcycle rev up, and I basically flipped a shit and started running like fuck across the parking lot to my backyard. (Great real estate location, I know.)

My father was home when I got back to the house, and I mentioned the guy in the parking lot. All he had to say was that I was an idiot for walking in the back of the school instead of the

holy shit

guys

my dog

is barking

in the room next to this one

and

there’s nothing there

holy shit

MY DOG

IS BARKING AT

OH MY GOD WAIT

SOMEONE IS THERE

HOLY

SHIT

FUCK

FUCK

OH MY GOD

OH MYGsaafs d adsf oti

Oh man, if I died right now, none of them would notice.

It’s great, really. We’re all sitting in this little circle, and they’re listening to themselves talk, and I could have a spontaneous cerebral hemorrhage, and none of them would even stutter in their speech.

I don’t even know what they’re talking about. I never really know. I sort of just play along and nod and smile at all the right moments. Sometimes the wrong moments. That’s always awkward. 

Awkard. Shit, I am so awkward. I can’t help it if I’m obnoxious. They just make me feel the need to be this way. I have this strong urge to set myself apart from them. Their giving me weird looks after I say things is reassuring. It reminds me that I’m not like they are.

I would love to be somewhere else right now. I’d love to be sitting on my ass at home, reading Ginsberg like the pretentious word-whore I am. I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness…

Well, if my generation has any best minds, I can’t say I’ve seen them destroyed, because I haven’t even seen them to begin with. I can’t find them anywhere. The best minds of my generation are probably busy smoking pot behind Stop&Shop and having oral sex under the bleachers.

I chuckle to myself. The girl talking gives me a dirty look. Ooh, threatening. But before I can glare back, she’s already babbling again.

I am pretty sure I don’t speak the same language as these people. I have no idea whatsoever what they’re talking about. I probably don’t know anything about what they’re talking about, and it’s not as if my contribution to the conversation is being missed by anyone, anyways.

I rip up tufts of grass. I’m allergic to grass. I’m sitting in grass. Fuck.

I think I heard someone mention college. I think I’m going to puke.  Great idea, whoever brought that one up. Let’s all brag about the futures we don’t have yet.  Oh, you’re going to be a doctor? That’s great. I’m going to be broke as shit, and then I’m going to have to marry some idiot, live in suburbia, and drive a minivan. Dream big, that’s what I always say.

In a vain attempt to deter anyone from asking me questions, I pretend to be extremely fascinated with the settings on my new camera. It’s fisheye lomography camera - with actual FILM - and I have no idea how to work it. Photography is not exactly my forte. One of them casually mentions to me I’m a “fail of an Asian” for not knowing how to work my camera.

…Yes. Yes, you are absolutely right. I am a failure and a disgrace to my nationality because I never learned how to adjust the settings on a lomo camera. I should just abandon my heritage right now and live out the rest of my life as a Caucasian. I’ll even fill in the “white” bubble on standardized tests, instead of filling in the “Asian/Asian American/Pacific Islander” bubble. I am so glad you told me that not knowing how to work a camera means I’m a failure to my own race. I would have never considered that without your suggesting it! Really.

Jesus Christ. 

Yesterday, I was watching Animal Planet with my little brother, and I watched a squirrel get eaten by a rattlesnake. It was so disturbing; I wanted to shut my eyes when it happened, but I just couldn’t look away. Being here with these people is like that… only worse.

If high school is supposed to be the best four years of my life, then I plan on swimming with sharks in open water after graduation.

I could never understand why people would say that “the criminal always returns to the scene of the crime.” I didn’t get it. Why would the criminal want to do that once the crime had been committed - why would the criminal even NEED to do that once the crime had been committed? It didn’t make sense to me.

But I am slowly realizing that I am just like that criminal, only the scene of my crime is white suburbia. I hate it here! I can’t fit. I am made for something - anything - else. A city. A farm. I don’t give a damn. Anything but suburbia.

Yet that won’t happen. I will always return to suburbia. My old stomping ground, kind of. I am doomed to lawns and doorbells and mailboxes and white picket fences. I am doomed to be a suburban housewife. That’s all there is.

I don’t want that! I don’t want any of that for me. But I know myself, and I know that no matter what I do or where I go, I will always return to my crime scene. I’m a goddamn yo-yo. I’ll never make it that far without coming back. I am literally a slave to this sickening culture. I’m a slave to a fucking W.A.S.P. Nest. 

I am a slave to suburbia. I will always return.

The dumbest thing I ever did for you was stick my head in a bowl of ice water.

I thought it would distract me from thinking about you. And it worked, for a little while, which was great. That one split second - the second my face made contact with the ice - was the most glorious second of my adolescence. It was like having an orgasm on a rainbow while high as a kite just after winning the lottery.

Yeah, exactly like that.

I forgot about you for three seconds, and I was happy. So blissfully happy. The only thing on my mind was HOLY SHIT MY FACE IS GOING TO FALL OFF, and I could have died of joy right then and there.

But with time, you get used to everything. I got used to the cold. It didn’t sting like it did at first. Seconds after the initial plunge, your face materialized in my head. I was miserable again.

I keep hoping that forgetting you will be like sticking my head in the bowl of ice water. You’ll be fresh at first, and every single thought of you is going to hurt. But with time, it’ll hurt less, and eventually, I’ll be able to stand it. You won’t be as strong anymore. I will have adjusted; I will have moved on. Everything has to fade with time, right?

It’s ironic how I used to be so afraid of people leaving me. Now, I’ll do anything to be able to let them go.