excerpts from the book i'll never write

by Nadia Nell Starbinski

Being in love with you feels like falling into your bed after a long day at work. Like this is where I am supposed to be. I just look at you and I am home.

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 am not here to tell you it’s going to be okay because you already know that. Anyone can tell you that. I am not here to stitch up your wounds.

I am not a nurse or a doctor. I don’t know how to fix you and I wouldn’t want to try. I am here to tell you that it’s time to heal. It’s time to let go of the years you’ve lost to your misery. The years you’ve spent falling in love with your sadness and the way your bones look when there’s nothing but skin over them. Stop planning out your funeral and stop writing your suicide note. Save your energy for the love letters you will have to write one day. Save your good stationary. Stop staring at your veins like they will bleed answers. Some days, you will still feel the hollow sort of heaviness like your bones are made of iron pipes. All you need to hear is that it is okay to be sad for no reason, a billion reasons, or for one small reason.

Some days your lungs will bleed and the fresh air is made of salt. Some days your skins will be a wound and the world is nothing but acid. On these days, you need to know that it is okay to cry. Some days you will feel naked and vulnerable like when sadness left, he took your whole closet with him. I am writing this because none of us can be saved. None of us can be fixed, because there’s nothing that needs fixing. You are you. Do not listen to the boy who tells you that you are broken because he hasn’t bothered looking into a mirror. Some days, loud noises will still feel like needles on your skin. People will raise their voices and they will ask why you are scared of them. Some days ...

will wonder why they’ve put you on so many drugs and you will ask yourself why you can’t function on any less. On days like this, there are only a couple things you must remember: you’ve been through worse before. You are limitless. The things you are capable of are infinite. There is someone waiting to tell you how proud they are of you for making it this far. I am writing this...