I Could Live Here Forever

by Hanna Halperin

It was startling, to be looked at like that. I felt like I could tell him anything, but I held back. I was already scared that I might never see him again.

I’d never felt that way kissing anyone before. I desperately didn’t want it to end.

looking. I swallowed; I felt so much for him in that moment. I stopped myself from saying so or reaching over and touching him.

“I bet you’re usually the prettiest girl in the room, and you have no idea.”

Deep down I knew that I was pretty, but it seemed embarrassing to admit this, because I knew there was something ugly about me, too. My prettiness wasn’t straightforward or consistent and it was something I felt more when I was by myself.

I would come to realize over time that we fiction writers were just as emotional as the poets; we just did a better job of concealing it.

I had emotions, though. Big, torrential emotions. But that was why I read. That was why I wrote. I wasn’t one to call attention to myself in real life.

I didn’t need to be the prettiest or the most successful or even the most talented. But I desperately wanted—needed—to be loved.

I didn’t know what to do with his words except commit them to memory. Even if he was lying, it was the best lie someone had told me.

“You’re a little nuts, you know that?” I said, as we climbed into the car.

Charlie turned the key in the ignition. “I’m a lot better than I used to be.”

I know what happens when you write things down. They change shape. Some of the feeling goes away. Things on the page are never as rich as they are in your head, as they were

Sometimes I’ll make eye contact with a stranger, usually a man, and I can tell they are seeing something on my face—something totally naked.

Each time she started something new, she acted as though she’d finally found the thing that would make her happy.

“All I’ve ever done with anyone is drugs. That’s why I love you, Leah. You’re the one person I know whose life doesn’t revolve around getting high. We do so many things together and it’s never about that.”

When he hugged me, he held me close to him, and underneath his unwashed smell, I could smell Charlie—whatever it was about him that I loved.

“And I’ve messed up a lot. But I know that there’s this thing between us.”

“Like this buzzing electric hum that when we’re in the same room it’s there and we both feel it, and probably other people can feel it, too. But I’m serious, Leah. It’s not something I want to give up on.” “I don’t know,” I said. “I feel that hum, too. But you don’t seem . . .” I paused. “Healthy.” “Every day I’m trying to get healthier. I’m trying to be the best possible Charlie Jacob Nelson that I can be. That’s all I can give you.” “I need to be on my own for a while,” I said, letting go of his hand.

brother lol.

When I was young I’d always known that the antidote to my loneliness would be to fall in love someday. I looked forward to love more than anything else about growing up. More than leaving home or learning to drive or doing drugs—things that other kids were excited about. I didn’t care about those things. The only thing I wanted was to be known completely by someone, to know someone completely.

Being in love made the heaviness go away. And being alone again after having been in love was even worse than the original loneliness.

How was it that just yesterday I felt free and happy to be lying here, by myself? Today it felt unbearable. I’d been alone with my thoughts for over twenty-four hours.

Often, when I spoke about Charlie, I felt like I was trying to paint him in just the right way. I knew that certain details would make people dislike him—or, worse, dislike me. Think that I was weak. I was pathetic. Desperate. So I left out parts of the story—things he said and did, things I said and did.

In the waiting room, I found Vivian crying. “Are you okay?” I asked. “I see it,” she said, wiping her eyes. “I see why you love him.” No one had ever said anything like that to me before, and I sat down beside her and began to cry, too.

:(

I wished, suddenly, that she would hug me. I wished that we knew each other in a different context.

i feel this way about strangers sometimes, not often but when i do, this is what it sounds like written down.

He teased me sometimes that when we were in the apartment I would follow him around. He’d get up and go to the kitchen, and I’d pad along behind him.

Being saved from sadness and saving someone from sadness—these weren’t just things I yearned for out of the blue. It was something I’d been born into. I didn’t know how to separate the feeling of love from the feeling of wanting to escape.

for it to be the easiest thing in the world to be hugged by my mother.

I never actually knew what he was doing. I was outside his world, even though he was inside of mine. Really, he was my entire world.

It wasn’t a real conversation. “I always just want you to stay with me,” I repeated, like a broken record.

Someone would show me a little love and I’d open my arms to them. I trusted it. I learned after a while, though, that there’s a lot of bad people out there. It didn’t make me less loving, but it made me pickier. At the end of the day, you have to decide what you want to accept in a relationship.”

“See you soon, sweet girl. Miss you already.”

There was something in me—a part of myself that had been there long before I’d ever met Charlie—that had found something in him that I simply could not let go of.

Now the lights were on and my eyes were open. I was watching it all happen.

It was better with the disgusting guys, because with them I could really disappear—get outside my head for a while, surrender to the experience. I always went along. I never said no.

I was selfish and cruel. And I’d been cruel to the one person who never hurt me. I realized, with a crushing sadness, that there might be no return from this.

how it feels like rn.

It hurt, but not in the way I wanted it to.

“A relationship isn’t supposed to make you happy. You find happiness on your own. A partner is there to support you and build with you. It seems as though you’re looking for some magic person who’s going to solve all your problems, but you have to do that yourself. What we have together is complicated, but it’s good and real.”

It was so rare that I felt attracted to someone and safe with them at the same time.

There was still that warmth about her—that warmth that I loved—but her eyes were bright and hard in a way that was new. I saw, looking at her, that she’d been in hell, and she’d decided at a certain point to leave it.

That familiar tug returned; the sense of not quite fitting. A sadness in a moment when you were supposed to feel happy.