The first time the lie slipped out of my mouth, I knew I had found my way out. The words simply rolled off my tongue and popped out into the world. I told everyone I left New York because I needed the change. I answered every question like it was no big deal, like, “Yeah, it was time for a change.” As if my heart started to yearn for something new — started to yearn for another adventure, one that would push me into the unknown once again.
The lie sprouted white wings and I held onto it as I flew across the Atlantic Ocean and landed in London; the truth is my heart wasn’t yearning for anything — not when I had you.
But while the truth was hooked into my skin that weighed me down, the lie kept giving me the kiss of life every time I needed oxygen. No, I didn’t need a change. Not when you introduced happiness and light to my life. But happiness is a writer’s worst enemy; it takes our muse and defiles her right in front of our eyes.
Which is why I had to leave.
I left the island of Manhattan because it — you — made me so ridiculously happy. I left New York City because you made me the happiest girl on earth. I left NYC because my writing suffered.
Because I couldn’t write anymore.
I used to be able to write. I hopped on a plane to Los Angeles a couple of years ago, ready to tackle an MFA. I used to write about the dark, the ghosts of my past that played with me ever since I was a little girl. I used to run with ghouls and monsters, and gladly allowed memories to haunt me every midnight. I used to write about rape and abuse, about perverse sexual thoughts that should never be found dining inside a little girl’s mind. I used to write about all the wrong reasons why loving the dark, dark night was the best thing to ever happen to anyone.
That was my happiness; that was me never being alone. Not with thoughts like that swimming around in the ocean of my mind, not when I had a mind that was never quiet, that would never shut up, not when I had a mind that would never stop snarling and shouting and screaming.
Anxiety and depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder were the greatest friends I could want, and they would join me every single day and night as I put pen to paper and words poured from my fingers and found new life in the universe. Anxiety made me rush into the darkest corner of my brain and sit and write while depression kept vomiting green liquid inside my head. I tortured characters I created and loved, characters who should’ve left me a long, long time ago, but they stayed; they stayed as I wrote chapter after chapter after chapter.
Characters who slowly started to look a lot like you.
Obsessive-compulsive disorder made me get out bed every single night in my apartment in West Hollywood at 3:33 a.m. to check if the stove was off. It made me turn it back on and off — just to be sure — before stopping by the light switch to turn that on and off again. I turned that light switch on and off three times every single night, exactly six hours after I texted you goodnight — once for God, twice for Christ, and thrice for the Holy Spirit. Obsessive-compulsive disorder also made me stare at the lock on the door for a full 33 seconds — just to make sure it was locked. Just to make sure I was keeping all of the bad things inside my apartment, to make sure my demons stayed and hugged my body because you were all the way in New York; just the way it was supposed to be.
I experienced Los Angeles through black ink — never wrote in anything other than black. “To match the colour of my heart and soul,” I joked when you asked me why over Skype, and it was then your turn to snarl and tell me my heart was filled with colours of the rainbow, as if God was smiling down at us at that very moment.
And somehow my black pens became replaced with blue and purple and dark green once I made the move to New York. Coloured pens were all I grasped for when a thought invaded my brain. Somehow, I stopped playing with distorted memories of faces and started staring at your picture in my wallet — stared at it before I fell asleep instead of the lock on the door. Sometimes I would look at it for 30 seconds or maybe for five minutes — I don’t know and I wasn’t really counting anyway. But I stopped checking the stove because you made everything inside my head go quiet. Somehow, you slipped through the cracks of turning the lights on and off every night — you fell into my heart and soul long before you fell into my bed, into my very body, and I was falling in love with you faster than I ever thought possible.
My ghosts started to fade in the background and I began to stop pleading with them to stay. My demons weren’t screaming inside my head anymore; the only loud noises I heard came from your mouth when we were alone in your apartment. My fingers ceased searching for the holes in my ears attempting to keep all the loudness inside me; I quit hoping for bad thoughts that usually rolled around whenever the clock struck witch’s hour.
I even stopped washing my hands for 180 seconds every time I needed to because your body was the purest form I had ever touched. When I had you in the bed next to me, the world fell away and I could see no germs trying to assault my body. I knew the stove was off without checking and I could worship your body like it was the gates to heaven and I would find immortality in your, “Oh my God, please don’t stop.”
I could keep the lights off too, because your soul was the only lantern I needed to find my way home.
Oh yes. You made me deliriously happy. But the castle you built with those high walls inside me — the ones that told me I was enough, the ones that taught me to look up because the sun rises every morning, as the storm passes every night — kept words locked outside.
And I couldn’t write anymore.
I didn’t have to write to save my soul, and I didn’t really know what to do. Because while you gave me myself, I lost those friends that kept me company all those lonely years of growing up.
So I jumped on a plane and crossed the Atlantic like there was nothing to it. Like I wasn’t tearing my own heart into pieces, like it wasn’t shattered; like the demons weren’t rubbing their hands as they feasted on my mangled body. Like I wasn’t leaving you behind, like my head wasn’t starting to chime all over again as I lost you in the crowd at JFK.
Now I find myself writing on cold London nights in black ink again — I also find myself switching lights on and off, watching the flame on the stove live and die. I am only able to leave the house during even minutes — never odd — and write in two documents side by side on a 90% scale; I also rearrange my desk with objects that are perpendicular to each other.
I find I circle dates that would have marked anniversaries and I’m terrified of reaching the one year mark of when I last saw you — because the day after that I’ll no longer be able to think, “This time last year…”
Perhaps the only thing I no longer do is wash my hands after I hold your photograph.
Thoughtfully, Yours 