Obsessions

3.

"Bleak- the chances of surviving, if you're too involved in fighting with yourself to see that the outside world is attacking you from within."--Aparna

...

Maybe if I had ran a little faster that day. A little faster from the monster inside and from the monsters present, I wouldn't be doing this. But what is done, is done and what is too be done, will happen. I cannot stop it, and you cannot stop me.

..

It was a beautiful May afternoon in the shining city of New York, New York, and my boyfriend and I were spending it in a dark alleyway--doing something very illegal.

It wasn't borderline illegal, or somewhat legal. It was illegal. It was the kind of thing children were taught not to do very early on. "Don't draw on the walls, Alex," I remember my father telling me.

It was considered art by some, but that's not why we did it. We did it for the thrill. The thrill that you get from doing something that you knew was so wrong. We did it for the rush, but we did nothing else.
We did not do drugs.
We did not smoke. (Stressful moments were an exception for Nat)
We did nothing else that was really "outrageous".

Other than that, we were pretty ordinary.
Plain and ordinary, except for the fact that we were two teenagers living in a luxurious condominium rather than attending college.

We chose to defy the norm.
That was just the kind of people we were.