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.

I was tired of trying to break my wall down, just to build it up again. It became a heartbreaking cycle I didn’t want to be on anymore. 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.

Like my heart couldn’t find its rhythm until it beat next to yours.

Being in love with you feels like I am actually me.

Somehow featherweight seems safe.

Somehow fragile would manage to be sufficient in cushioning your fall. And often we do. Fall, that is. And that’s not the part that hurts. It’s the reeling realization that there’s no one to help you work your way back up.

I am suffocating, yet I am the one holding the bag over my head.

“So this is what it feels like to grow up?” I thought to myself, “To have every sense of innocence stripped from you in a matter of minutes?”

And sometimes shaky knees and feeling like you’re going to throw up and staying up so late you get sick is love and not pain, but sometimes the teeth you feel when you’re kissing and the way the red of the flowers he brought you matches the red in the sink and the way the butterflies in your stomach make you feel like dying is pain and not love.

It’s 2am and my arms searched for yours from under the sheets. What a horrible way to wake up.

I don’t miss you. I miss myself.

“Look back,” he said, “It’s all so different from over here. “I don’t want to look back. I don’t ever want to go back there. It was so dark and cold over there.” “You can’t forget my dear; it’s an awful thing to…forget.” “But I want to forget, why would I want to remember so much pain?” “You must learn from it,” he whispered,” It is an important part of you.” “That wasn’t a part of me. Those were the demons inside of me.” “You musn’t let the demons win my child.” “How do you kill the demons inside without killing yourself?” “Look back,” he insisted, “It was so beautiful over there.”

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.

There’s a certain thrill to it, the danger of falling in love with the idea of somebody rather than who they actually are.

Love yourself enough to know when to walk away.

GRAB THE SKY