there's something very strange about being friends with someone who's eighteen.
it just gets me thinking about what i was like at eighteen. did i sound this sure of myself? like i already went through shit, like i know things? sure, i have a past few people have but there's just this attitude that comes with reaching that age. everyone's like that, i guess, but was i that estranged from reality as this girl is?
i don't really think so though. because even though she has a lot of culture on her, she hasn't been through much, and she speaks through the eyes of someone who's barely bitten the apple. i guess i can understand it? but i don't. i don't understand her. but it just makes me feel
really alone. because now that i think about it, i feel that way with everyone. with my friends, with my family, with my lovers. it's like there's something in me that just can't really connect with people. what he did, what they both did, what i've seen, i feel like i'm shriveling up like a plum.
i just can't get the feeling off of me. the feeling of not being understood. yes, i sound like a cranky teenager but it's just facts, it's what my bones whisper to me in the dark. after something like that i feel like no one truly gets it, but i've felt this way back. before my rape, before mati, before turning 17.
i felt this ever since i got on that plane to boston. this kind of disconnection from myself and the things i live, the things i see, the people and roles i take on. saying goodbye to my family, seeing them ant-sized waving their arms back and forth. having two voices in my head every waking day since i learned english, two different girls, with completely different dreams and fears. i used to be a headstrong child. confident, bright, earnest. i turned passive, hedonist, manipulative and too melancholic for my own good. once you move away at that age, you just kind of let those things happen, i guess. what kind of person would i be had i not moved away? it's something that looms over my head like death because i know i would've been completely different.
i can't connect. there's an error in me. this shift, this feeling that i'll never catch up to the present. like i'm stuck in static and no matter how much i shift the antenna i can't catch the signal. there's this kind of, feeling, the strangest feeling of emptiness - like i'm stuck at an airport, always waiting for that flight to take me back home but i never got on it, i missed it, it's gone. has it ever even existed to begin with, or was it a one-way flight? i haven't gone back home in sixteen years. there's never really been a home for me. not in boston, not in buenos aires. not in gabriel, or zoe, or sol. there's no homeliness in my bones or in my flesh. my face doesn't feel mine. my life doesn't feel mine. i fill myself with mahler and japanese cartoons and my friends, i get drunk every weekend, i fuck whoever i want, i have people who care for me dearly - but i don't feel alive. i don't feel like i'm truly living.
it's just so strange to explain. but here i am still in the same airport, my harry potter books are now manga comics, my lips are the color of raspberries, i still have the same fringe and pin straight hair. i've been robbed of the girl i could've been. probably healthy, probably happy, probably not a teacher or gay. maybe i would've never been raped. maybe i wouldn't have this almost uncannily supernatural ability at reading people's true intentions even down to what they type online
maybe i would've never met matias either. or gabriel. or camila, and my insides churn, rip themselves apart, disintegrate. what a life, huh? a life without zoe. a life without combing my fingers through her black locks and losing myself in her river-run eyes. would i love mahler as i do now? would i have ever picked up a cello, fucked a girl, watched an anime, gotten addicted to alcohol, tried to kill myself?
i've been robbed. every day, i'm robbed. i just feel so tired. tired of never catching up. tired of being stuck in this limbo, in this oblivion. in months i'll be twenty one and i still feel like i'm licking my wounds from what's happened years ago.