excerpts from the book i'll never write

by Nadia Nell Starbinski

I’ve spent all hours of the night contemplating the words to say to you, but no combination of twenty-six different letters could ever accurately capture even a sliver of what this feeling is.

You are just unlike any other man I have ever met. You're open with me about what is on your mind. Whenever there is a conflict between us, you are patient with me and understanding. You always put me first. You remember what's important, and what's not. You always tell me you never want to lose me, and I promise I will never let you go.

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.

Some nights I think about dying and some nights I think about living till I break.

And I didn’t know that you could cry so hard that your heart stops bleeding and still wake up the next morning until I met you.

Jesus I’d swallow poison if it tasted like you.

There are plenty of ways to kill yourself. Stick a gun to the back of your throat, fall asleep in the garage with the car on, jump into a river and let the rock in your chest where your heart used to be drag you to the bottom, smoke too many cigarettes, bleed yourself dry. I think the most effective way is kissing someone who’s name you will never be able to say without shaking.

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. When they leave, you realize that somewhere along the way you lost yourself. You don’t even know who you are anymore because they made you into something completely different. I don’t miss you. I miss myself.

“How do you kill the demons inside without killing yourself?”

But you’re not here anymore. And that’s all that really matters.

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.

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

But that’s the problem- I hold on to the memories instead of people. I love so much that I continue to fall in love with a person that doesn’t even exist anymore. There’s a certain thrill to it, the danger of falling in love with the idea of somebody rather than who they actually are.

The best love is not manipulative, it is not inconsistent, and it is not selfish. The best love is confident in himself, he knows who he is and what he wants and will turn those stars into constellations.

“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.” 1 Corinthians 13:4-8

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.

All you need to hear is that it is okay to be sad for no reason, a billion reasons, or for one small reason.

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.