coffee and cigarettes.

paz.

Suelo tocar fondo, salir a flote y volverte a buscar.

There is a strange phenomenon that is plaguing the 20-something generation. And, before the inevitable freak-out over yet another article about those poor, poor 20-somethings and their plethora of #firstworldproblems, let’s get serious for a second. We were born into a generation centered on an ever-expanding growth of technology. Where our parents were wearing each others letterman jackets and mailing love letters, we—yes, the rejected, sad, lonely 20-somethings—are exploring Tinder for “something casual” and staring wide-eyed at the ellipses on our iPhone screens, praying that what we just typed, thoroughly and totally without autocorrect’s help, doesn’t make us sound like the emotional wrecks that we actually are. Our generation needs to finally accept that we’re slightly dead inside. We’ve driven ourselves insane by a complete lack of real human interaction. Intimacy has become terrifying. Talking on the phone with another human being has become uncomfortable and foreign. We go out to dinner with friends, staring at our iPhones, waiting for that text, when we should be present in the moment. We shouldn’t be waiting for a reply to solidify our doubts about that guy/gal we met at the bar last week. We should be having conversations. We don’t know how to have conversations anymore, and isn’t that the most terrifying thing of all? We’ve become obsessed with the casual. We don’t want strings. We don’t want honesty. We want the temporary, the easy way in and the easiest way out. We want to have the greenest grass in the neighborhood, and if we see it starting to grow weeds and wither, best to get a new lawnmower. We want to have sex with as many different wildly attractive people that we can, and shake hands at the end of it. We want to be cool, distant, and unattainable. We decipher texts instead of feelings, we break-up via Instagram, and we don’t ever want to be the one at the losing end. The ultimate failure is being the one who loves the other too much, hell, even likes the other too much. Even worse, the rules of casual dating have become engrained in our society. The laws of communication have become almost irrevocably warped. We tell each other things like, don’t text someone first, you’re better than that. Get the upper hand at all costs, and for Christ’s sake, don’t tell someone you like them. Don’t tell them you love them; then they have all the power! And what will you have? Nothing tangible. And that’s the point we’re all missing. Relationships are not tangible, love isn’t something you taste or smell, love is not our sixth sense. But goddamn, can you feel love. Love takes you by the throat and disrupts your whole life. Love proves you wrong. It might even prove you right. Love humiliates you. A friend recently told me, “Love is agony.” And it is. Love is something we are so scared of, we throw away the beginnings of it, because it is just too serious, and our fragile, narcissistic egos can’t deal with the rejection. We haven’t let ourselves fall in love. In fact, we are starting to fall out of love with the rest of the human race. Life is not about waiting for something to happen. We are waiting for someone to do the unthinkable, to reject these rules, to fuck the hypothetical, emotionally crippled man that is looming above every text we send that has a typo, over every vaguely telling Facebook status we hope will impress our exes, and over every Instagram photo that didn’t get as many likes as we anticipated, and ask someone to dinner. And we can’t let anyone know we feel that way. We need to keep our shit in check. We need to care less. But, I propose that those rule-breaking, anarchist crazies are indeed still out there, hiding under a rock, where the shame of their fully-beating hearts aren’t on display for the rest of the robots. And they’ve almost given up. They’ve been burned and bruised, but aren’t quite broken. Let’s be those people, it’s not too late. Let’s refuse to believe that romanticism is dead and buried. So, this is for all the people who ever screamed that they loved someone at the top of their lungs. This is for the people who would tell someone that they’re magic, just so they knew. This is for the people in our generation who don’t like the casual, don’t want the casual, but the oh-so-scary, unexpected, beautiful, ridiculous feeling that comes from loving someone, from being loved. It’s for the people who still believe in love letters and letterman jackets, and the people who fucking call. This isn’t a death sentence for the casual age; it’s a signal to look up from the screens, to let your phone die once in a while, to make some really great eye contact. We still have hope, though. We’ll always have hope. That we’ll meet someone who shatters all those pre-dispositions, someone who makes us want to throw our cell phones into the river because we don’t want to miss a second of their presence. Someone that makes us want to break all those pesky little rules because they’re better than every one-night stand, every no-rules summer fling, better than those dick pics you’ve gotten used to, or all the people you thought you could change, and you’re going to want to look at them.

Y la vida siguió, 
como siguen las cosas que no tienen mucho sentido.

No puede ser
que estemos aquí
para no poder ser.

I'll fucking digest you,
one kiss at a time.
You wish I was yours, 
and I hope that you are mine.

Nunca tuve tanto miedo, es una lástima que no crea en algún dios.
Sé que vas a estar bien.

subir
bajar
o reaccionar

Maybe someday you'll be somewhere talking to me, as if you knew me, saying 'I'll be home for next year, darling. I'll be home for next year'. And maybe sometime, in a long time, you'll remember what I had said there, I said I'll be home for next year, darling, 'I'll be home for next year'.

I just wanna be yours.

No me quemes la cabeza si tu fuego ya no existe.

Attention Deficit Depression.

I get really sad sometimes.
When I get really sad I think about my two options:
1. Fake my own death
or
2. Cause my own death.
When I was 15 I would bang my head against a wall because I couldn't remember what the square root of math was. To me, Pi equaled 3.14 seconds of time it would take to eat an actual pie.
It equaled apples, peaches, pumpkin, chicken pot pie, cutie pie, pie hole, bye bye Miss American - pie.
It made zero sense to a zero like me.
If I am greater than X, than Y did we break up?
"Just solve the equation!" the teacher cries.
And I try to think in digits but instead, it turns into
The number of nights we ran into the ocean, screaming.
The number of times I fell in love with boys.
The number of times I fell in love with girls.
The number of times we fell into each others arms, with our chins on each other's left shoulders "because" she said, "that way our hearts can touch".
The number of seconds it took for our blazing bodies to collapse onto grass, or sand, or mattress.
Fingers in mouths, fingers in noses, fingers in toasters, fingers inside everything but text books.
The number of days he stopped looking into my eyes.
The number of times my parents were "disappointed" in my behavior.
The number of pills I took to stop banging my head against the wall because I was so sad about numbers.
About a year and half ago, I got really sad again.
People on the internet "hurt my feelings" and I let them.
While my "friends" IRL were out feasting with kings, I was left alone, a knight in a cave, knees shaking.
I always thought I was sad about numbers, but now words?
Out of nowhere, this shrewd oppressor, Billy Bully, reaches out from my monitor and sucker-punches me right in the jaw. He then grabs me by the collar of my shirt and says "listen to me, girl. you're dirt."
As it turns out, the negativity has a face, and in that moment it was my own twisted grimace.
I had been gazing into a mirror of contempt and insecurity that became valid because I heard things like
"I just wanna bend her over my lap like the slut she is.
That girl sounds a lot better on mute.
She's getting so fat.
This girl is dumb.
Get a nose job,
get a boob job,
get a better job.
Kill yourself."
Kill yourself...
They say sticks and stones may break your bones but words can never hurt you.
Well, that's not true.
Words are what made me pick up a knife, and I held it to my throat in a moment of weakness.
And I imagined those faceless people, the ones that were tearing me to shreds, and I thought 'Who hurt them this badly?' This was never even about me! Why are we all so nauseatingly affected?
When the knife falls to the floor, barely missing my bare feet, I blow kisses to my reflection, because all I'm missing is balance.
Instead of reaching for something to hurt me, I reach for something to help me, and sometimes,
pills do because maybe some of us are wired differently,
I refuse to hide my sadness,
I'll wear it as a badge of courage in my fight for happiness,
and it's okay if a Prozac a day keeps the monsters at bay
because when I'm sitting alone at a coffee shop and I look up from my book,
I think, 'wow, this is what normal feels like'. 
Words, both callous or cordial, are just words. 
And, you know, numbers aren't so bad either! 
Like the number of times he simultaneously held my hand and the steering wheel. 
The number of times my parents told me how proud they are of the woman I've become. 
The number of laughs my sister and I shared as we ate pie straight out of the garbage can at 1am. 
"So, what's the problem?" the universe asks. 
I reply with this: "The left side of my brain departed from the station traveling at a speed of 65 miles per hour. Later, The right side of my brain departed from the station traveling in the opposite direction of the left, it was going 75 miles per hour. After the left side had traveled for one thousand seven hundred and eighty days, it was only a few miles away from the right side. 
How long did it take for both sides of my brain to man up and get back on those pills?"
The answer? 
Asking "are we there yet?" when we hadn't even left the driveway.

the nbhd.

Any other day, I would call, you would say, "Baby, how's your day?" But today, ain't the same. Every other word is "uh-huh," "yeah, okay", could it be that you are at the crib with another lady? And if you took it there, first of all, let me say I am not the one to sit around and be played, so prove yourself to me, I'm the one that you claim. Why don't you say the things you said to me yesterday? I won't let you say I'm assuming things. If something's going down, that's the way it seems. It shouldn't be the reason why you actin' strange, nobody's holding you back from me. 'Cause I know how you usually do when you say everything to me times two. Why can't you just tell the truth? If somebody's there, then tell me who. Say my name, say my name, if no one is around you, say "Baby, I love you", if you ain't runnin' game. Say my name, say my name, you actin' kinda shady, ain't calling me baby. Why the sudden change? 

And there's no map. 

And a compass wouldn't help at all.

haters, 
fakers, 
mass manipulators.

And if you're in love, then you are the lucky one, 
'cause most of us are bitter over someone. 
Setting fire to our insides for fun, 
to distract our hearts from ever missing them. 
But I'm forever missing him.

But I crumble completely when you cry.
It seems like once again you've had to greet me with goodbye,
I am always just about to go and spoil the surprise,
take my hands off of your eyes too soon.

I'm a fountain of blood in the shape of a girl. 
You're the bird on the brim, hypnotized by the whirl.
Drink me, make me feel real. 
Wet your beak in the stream.

Yo me quería quedar en tu espalda. 

Y que no se haga de día 

nunca más.