Here’s what will happen. You will grow and your hair will lighten from the sun and your legs will scar because you never quite got used to how tall you are and your fingers will start itching for pencils, will start itching to write the world around you.
A boy with blue eyes will try to teach you what love is but you’re young, too young and he needs so much from you so you break his heart and he loves you always. You keep him on speed dial for nights that end in tears, he loves you always. Next will come a boy with brown eyes framed by blonde eyelashes and he will break your heart and your soul and your body and you will begin to understand what you did to the blue-eyed boy. Then you’ll lose yourself for a while and there will be lots of boys. One who plays the guitar and introduces you to the Cure and calls exactly when he says he will and your family loves him, your mother loves him. Then there’s one who’s shorter than you but his anger is bigger than anything you’ve ever seen and you’ll run towards it just to feel something and then you’ll feel his hands on you and you’ll run away as far as you can. And then there will be a handsome boy with a beard who is smarter than anyone you know and he teaches you everything about love-how to make it, how to give it, how it feels like the first stars in the sky and oh God, how they sparkle. But he leaves when the dark cloud takes over your mind and for a while, the dark cloud is all there is. There are hundreds of nights in a row where you fall asleep with tears drying on your face and your heart aching so you climb into the pages of your favorite books until spring gives way to summer. Then there is a plane and a boy who is a single ray of light in a season that is otherwise marked by your inward darkness. The boy in the summer has a funny lilt to the way he speaks and he tells you kissing you is electric and you’re sorry the day that you get on the plane that takes you away from him. The dark cloud that has been threatening a storm for years takes over and for a long time, there is only black. Alcohol, cigarettes, the drugs that used to do it. Nothing turns it lighter. You can’t feel anything. You can’t even self-destruct anymore because what is there left to do when you’re finally destroyed? You start to think maybe you won’t stay here anymore. Not here being this place, but here being this world. You dream about the kitchen knives and how they would feel against your skin, what it would be like to be out of this body, to be free from this mind.
But, listen, sweetheart. Here’s the thing. You must gather the last ounce of courage you have- and you do. You tell your family about the cloud and you watch your mother cry and sister cry you hear your father tell you he’s proud of you, you can do it, he loves you so much, he’s so proud of you. They ask you what you want and the real, honest answer scares you so much that you start taking the pills and talking to the shrink and after a while, it does feel like maybe your head is getting a little smaller and you treat your body right and you let yourself cry on the bad days and laugh on the good ones and you carry your notebook around so you’re always writing and you stop drinking black coffee. You pour the milk in and let it turn it a light, soft brown. And guess what? You like it better that way.
