Creative Voices
By Angelica Luzzi / Contributor
I write about moments, fractions of memories that don’t fit in the timeline of my life, the average progression of standard events in my daily normality. There are instants that have a different energy than others, an energy that is starving for attention. Those are the moments I tend to write about; because putting together the words to describe them is the only way I have to go back in time. My favorite bright memories to write about are small, but so are stars from a distance, and you were the brightest of them all.
In the library, there is never the type of people you would expect to be there. You would expect to find students that look like they have their life together, going through pages and pages highlighting and all the stuff that good students actually do, but I sit with my laptop open next to a girl that is trying her best not to cry over a statistics problem. I would offer my help, but there is a reason why I’m studying literature. I usually come here to write in silence during the free hour that I have between my two Monday classes, but today is Friday, which means that this is an emergency session. I should have never texted you. I really shouldn’t have texted you, but it hurts so good to wait for your answer.
This morning the coffee was cold when I switched back to reality. I had spent probably more than twenty minutes staring at the bottle of milk because it reminded me how you would always order your coffee black, and then I spent another twenty minutes or so thinking about how I’m never going to get over you and how big of a loser I am. A nice start for a very productive and positive morning! I told myself that if I got dressed and ready for class, then I could have allowed myself to think about you a little more and wallow in my misery a little longer. So that is what I did, and then I crawled back in bed. I hate how every day now is starting to create a new sense of normality where I just feel comfortable feeling this hole in my chest or feel nothing at all. I hate how I’m allowing myself to spiral once again, except this time, there is no one to catch me. I turned to my left to look at the framed picture on the wall. I’m such a loser. Who would keep a picture of an almost ex-girlfriend framed in his new bedroom? Again, I was feeding the demons in my chest.
Sometimes I think that maybe I do like this feeling. It is kind of a hobby at this point to get my heart broken over and over again. I guess my favorite way to spend time is to believe that a person is more than just a person. While I was pondering about the beautiful tragedy that is my misery, a notification made my phone light up. Surprisingly, it was not a Google Calendar reminder nor the usual notification threatening how my iCloud storage is full. It was mamma asking how I was. And the spiral got tighter and tighter around my throat. I needed to get out of the house as soon as I could. I grabbed my laptop and my wallet. While I was walking down the stairs, I felt it coming. It always starts from my shoulders, and then it slithers down my arm until it reaches my hand, where it finds my phone already unlocked on your chat. “You said that the right one will come and won’t leave, but I don’t want the right one, and the shape of your lips is still printed inside my eyelids,” I managed to text you while feeling my heart explode in my ears. The rush of adrenaline that doing something undeniably wrong gives me is also undeniably enjoyable.
And for that single text, or maybe for the thousands sent in the recent past, I now find myself writing about you once again in this library that feels like a shelter for us hopeless.
I miss feeling miserable with you. Maybe I do have a thing for pain. However, feeling miserable because you loved someone else and I loved you, and you slightly loved me back once in a while felt miserable, but less miserable than miserable without you.
Again, my phone lights up, and the immediate rush of adrenaline covers my shoulders like a blanket. “You know you will always be special to me,” I read under your name on my screen. And here it is. That tiny drop of attention that keeps me alive, the drop that keeps me wanting for more, the drop that keeps me around. I am starving for your love, but everything you could have ever given me was a single drop. A single occasional drop of the way you love. I know I am supposed to wait at least half of the minutes it took you to reply back, but it’s not like you don’t already know how you own me. “Is he still in the picture?” I ask, my hands shaking. I can already taste the danger I put myself into with this question. I know he is. I know it is going to hurt like hell to have the confirmation, and when it arrives, it doesn’t surprise me how the knot in my chest shrinks. But then more words appear on the screen, and another drop glides over my wounds. “How’s school going? Have you been writing?” I wish I could be honest with you. I really do. Before I get to start typing my answer, more letters invade the screen, and my heartbeat shouts louder in my ears. “Listen, I know it is complicated more than we could have imagined, but I don’t want to lose you.” God, how I wish I could call her and scream how she was the one who refused my love, how she was the one holding someone else’s hand while I looked from afar, how she was the one who, when it came to choosing, chose somebody else. But more than that, I wish I could call her and scream how every page in my diary is black from my memories of her, how I look in the mirror and see the skin of a guy that she once used to lay next to. I wish I could call her and scream how she hasn’t lost me, but I know no matter how much I’d yell, she wouldn’t really hear me. “Oh, so you just want me here on your shelf, waiting for you to get tired of your other toy?” As soon as I press send, I turn off my phone. Enough self-destruction for today.
I remember how I used to write about my mom and her smile looking at my sister dancing on the dinner table during Christmas. I remember how I used to write in my tiny little journal how happy I was to move to another city and finally be able to study what I’ve always loved. I remember how writing was for cheering life. I miss writing about light.
The demons are calling, so I open back my laptop. It is not as if I had the right to choose what to write about. I could force myself to focus on something else and describe a different feeling and a different face, but the words wouldn’t heal me as much as the most hurting do. So here I am, typing your last words and how they poured fuel on the fire in my heart. I guess I should be thankful, and I am because without you, my writing class would be a lot tougher than it is. I really don’t want to write about you anymore, but I do. And now I’m writing in my notes app because my ego is too big to surrender, but so is my love.
Maybe I’ve been writing so much because no matter how I word it, I never get to explain how it feels and how it felt. Or maybe I just love to commiserate myself in the pain you gave me, so I cannot focus on the pain around me. There are bigger dogs than the ones called love, but I am a nineteen-year-old dude self-proclaimed as the biggest loser ever, and all I want to do is think about my love for you, and how now my life is just divided into two eras, the one before your touch and the one after. I wish I could read you what I wrote about you, but I’m too scared to show you my colors, too scared of finding out they don’t match yours.
I wrote so many lines about you my hand hurts, but my ego hurts the most.
thematthewrome.com 