excerpts from the book i'll never write

by Nadia Nell Starbinski

He was shy and mysterious; mysterious but in a good way. Like receiving a box of chocolates from a secret admirer and trying to match up the individual flavors to those tiny pictures in the lid.

So I stopped looking. I stopped looking for the guy who was going to want me for me; who made me feel comfortable and not ridiculous for being passionate about something; someone who didn’t just want to be tangled in the sheets with me but have something of substance.

while. I don’t want to wake up every morning second-guessing myself or wonder what I had done to justify the distance between us.

The vibe was effortless and the chemistry was undeniable.

To say the least, I never understood the concept of dating a close friend until I met you.

As a writer, my world is vibrant. My thoughts are consuming and every experience is followed by a philosophical analysis which often leads to the scribbling of excerpts from the book I’ll never write.

I am sad. Not in this beautiful way that everyone romanticized. I am anxious. Not in this aesthetic where claiming to have mental illness is worth bragging about. I am lost. In every definition of the word. I am suffocating, yet I am the one holding the bag over my head.

I know that kissing you will probably kill me, bury bullets beneath my skin and spit poison into my veins but I know I’ll kiss you anyway.

It is the idea of hands fitting together perfectly and legs tangling beneath sheets in perfect harmony that she is in love with.

Lately I’ve been holding bottles instead of you because it’s 4am and I’m grasping for you but my hands only find cold sheets and my bed doesn’t smell like your cologne, just the whiskey I spilled on my pillow two nights ago. _______________________________________

Sometimes there are people who come into your life and leave a permanent mark. They paint your soul different colors and change the way you see the world.

I don’t miss you. I miss myself.

I think there are people that you are supposed to let into your life, and I think that by design they are meant to leave and you are never supposed to speak again.

and you’re drunk off the idea that the premature sunlight will wash your sins away.

You can’t water the flowers in your soul with the finest pinot noir

The idea of being a hopeless romantic in a society built on the foundation of a hook-up culture is somehow unwanted; too passionate, too intimidating, if you will.

Nobody that perfect is placed in your life so precisely, so blissfully, with the best of intentions.

You hate to be this negative person but in a weirdly confusing way, it really does become too good to be true.

But that’s the problem- I hold on to the memories instead of people. I

I loved him with all that I had, and that love broke me from the inside out until I had nothing left to offer.