eighteen

Everything ends and everything begins and you are waiting for the moment that sparkles. The whole point of monotony and boredom and unremarkable days that you forget almost instantly is so that those moments you do love and cherish will shine out even brighter.

seventeen

You are bored; caged, like an animal. The words are soaring above your head like birds, but catching them is becoming impossible. Decipher. Are you certain that this is the reality?

Beauty is the only thing you search for.

sixteen

Remember. And hearing that voice on the phone after months of doing without is turning your brain to dust. Electricity pumped through your temples. Cannot handle this. Get excited, but don't be a dick about it.

fifteen

Lamenting broken hearts and lost genius. Silent tears. Your head is in another place, another time. Words bubble from your lips, excited, obsessive, but your sentences are twisted like rose vines, and you have repeated yourself so many times now that the conviction seems false. You are full of a single daydream, and no matter what you are doing your mind flutters back to the tragedy and the poetry. Above all, the resounding thought remains: can you write something that beautiful in the next five years?

fourteen

Your temper is a living thing; it stretches and twists like an animal, waiting. You can feel it pulsing through your body, into your heart, back out. You are always waiting, because the trigger is anything.

thirteen

Well, you're a laugh a minute, aren't you? No, not you. You.

twelve

Your disinterest in other people's negativity is surprising, considering how much of your own you wallow in. That repressed, silent sigh when they start talking again; the way you close your eyes slowly and take a deep breath, then nod, as if you have been listening. You are watching their mouth move, but you are somewhere else. It is summer and you are standing by the water and the sun sparkles, glaring into your eyes; you push your sunglasses up your nose and smile.

eleven

Ignore it. Ignore that feeling. Squash it now, before it takes over. You are doing well. Remind yourself of that. You are doing well. There are knots in your hair and your head aches and you...must...sleep...soon... But ignore it. You are going to be OH. KAY.

ten

Your ideas are a war in your mind. You want this, but you do that. You say this, but you think that. There is no following through with your plans. Your anger is a diamond of frustration and hate in your chest. Sometimes you mistake this for your heart, but then you remember that you lost that a long time ago.

nine

'You are not your fucking khakis.'

eight

Sat in the dark, world rushing by, hood up and there are tears rolling down your cheeks. Twelve hours later you are stood in your living room, head thrown back, dancing in the empty house. What a difference a day makes.

You saw your own blood today, pumped into tubes, deep red the colour of Christmas velvet. It made you feel mortal for a moment, and then you started thinking...if I can give up this, then I can give up anything. You stood up and felt strangely invincible, despite the tingling in your arm.

seven

A walking tragedy. Pain embodied. There is something so delicious about a man who looks like he is going to self-destruct.

six

Every other thought you have is questioning whether or not you are making the right choices. Does this mean already that it is the wrong choice? How can something that you have been preparing for for the last nine years of your life suddenly be so questionable? How can it make your stomach drop - and not in the good way - every time it enters your mind? There is no turning back after this. You do know that...right?

Maybe you're just lazy, but this all sounds like a lot of work.

five

Where did you go? Is it safe to ask you that? When your eyes glaze over and your head tilts to one side - what are you seeing? What are you thinking about? Your hair is turning white; did you know that? Maybe you should have a holiday. A day off. Take a trip to the countryside and look at the mountains. Stop the heavy sighs. Let calm radiate through your body like sand sinking to the bottom of a vase of water.

four

What have you been thinking about today? You looked in the mirror this morning and saw how winter was hounding you; how far over your eyes did you pull your hat? How often do you look around your room and hate what you see? Cleanse yourself, your life. Throw away all those shoes you never wear. Take the books you never read off your shelves. Do you need all this shit? Take it in the garden and burn it. Keep reminding yourself that sanitary is sanity.

three

Your mind is teeming with anxieties, too many to number. Questions, like what if you had done this, or what if you had done that. What if you had said this, or what if you owned that. Would you be quite so dissatisfied if you were somebody else?

two

You cannot function properly because the sheer force of your jealousy overhwelms you. It is not natural. How, you think, can you love somebody you have never met? How can you get a sharp pain in the centre of your ribcage when their faces spring at you from nowhere? Incomprehensible. But then again, those who think it incomprehensible have quite probably never loved something so much that you would die for it. Never felt a part of something, something bigger than you or them. You are with them. You are included. It is almost as if they are speaking and writing for you. Your near-sickening adoration is valid.

one

Things right now are the definition of strange. That relentless feeling that you are drowning, but you do not know which way the surface is to kick. You constantly have to catch your breath, although you had not realised that you were panicking. So many ideas of escape. How? Where? You sit there for minutes, staring into space, trying to figure out the incalculable. It could just be laziness, you think, this suffocation of two more years. But it is a necessary step, you must keep telling yourself, repeating it so that you do not start crying. And what is that, swelling up inside your chest? Something different; it tastes like the bitter tang of loneliness. Of not being important enough. You whisper to yourself that you must not care, that you must stop being so forgiving, stop giving but never receiving. Anger swells through your body, and the concoction it creates by mixing with the desperate panic is nothing short of poison. How are you even functioning? How do you get up in a morning, knowing that you realistically have sixty more years of this? It weighs you down, pressing on your shoulders like broken rocks.

You have dreams too, but you cannot play the guitar, and nobody cares about a word you write anyway.