From my eighteenth birthday

I turned eighteen today. 

It was a long journey but a short one for my dreams. 

I turned six today. I want to be a scientist, working in a lab. With insects and chemicals. 

I turned eight today. I want to be an astronaut. The sky looks down at me and extends its hands to reach out to me. I will do the same. 

I turned twelve today. I wish I could be a doctor. I want to be a surgeon and play with people’s bodies. Cutting through them, sewing them back. 

I turned fourteen today. I want to be an army. I want discipline and respect. I want integrity and strength. I want to protect and serve. 

I turned sixteen today. I’m tired. I just want to lay back and watch the stars, watch the sea, watch the clouds and watch the rain. I want to feel like a human, I want to be a human. 

I turned eighteen today. Who am I? I don’t know what I want anymore. I don’t know what it means to be a human anymore. I don’t know what I want to be anymore. Maybe I don’t even want to be anymore. I want to close my eyes and feel nothing. Stab me a thousand times and wounds are all you’ll ever see. They’ll never cure and I will never attend to my pain. I keep stumbling across your puzzles and throw them away because I don’t want to know answers anymore. You have built quite a house beside the sea. You thought I’d be there one day. But I’m not here anymore. I don’t know where I am because remember? I stopped looking. I hear the perfect silence now. I’ve silenced my childhood and I don’t hear my future anymore. It’s a void. It’s inexplicable. I could be pulled down to hell and it would all seem like a ruse to me. You could pull my nails apart and I would try to tell you that it hurts me. But remember? I’ve silenced myself now. My voice can’t come out anymore. It screams within. All of the time. Only I can hear these screams now. So many thoughts are occupying my head that nothing even matters to me anymore. You could pull me apart with the force of universes and I wouldn’t be able to tell you to stop because remember? I’ve killed my child self. She can’t tell you to stop anymore. She can see sparkling stars, or she can see armies running through the dust, she sees animals and chemicals and she sees a family worth calling hers. But she doesn’t know that it’s not real. She’s being pulled apart. Everything is a lie. I’ve blinded her. But I’m allowed to do that now. 

I just turned eighteen today. I have a cake for me. People are clapping all over the world. Is it a firework show? Is it a war? Is it the explosion of galaxies? She doesn’t know anymore. 

Let her blow her candles. She’s making a wish. Let’s keep quiet. 

“What is the wish?”

“I can’t tell you. It won’t come true.” 

“If you don’t tell me, I can’t work for it to come true.” 

“But you don’t have to work for it. I’ve wished for it. It’ll come to me.” 

She runs so fast. I never knew I could do that. What’s holding me back? Nothing. Not a single thing. Why can’t I run then? 

Help me run. I’m just eighteen and I want to run faster, more, more. 

I’ve saved a piece of cake for you. When you come home, will you have it? And will you bring back what you took away from me? Or will you take away something more? I promise to come down to your beach house tomorrow. Keep counting backwards from 100. I’ll be there in a moment. I just need to solve this puzzle. 

Oh, the puzzle I’ve stumbled across before! But I never solved it. How should I come down now? 

Are you still there? Are you still counting? Did you give up on me? I promise I’ll be there. I just need to ask the birthday girl the way to that house. Where is she again? Oh, right, she ran. She ran so fast. How should I catch up to her? 

Please tell me how. Please. Please just for once tell me how I should grab her and hug her and tell her that everything will be alright. She trusts on that candle a lot. I don’t want to break her trust. 

I’m eighteen. I’m twenty. I’m twenty four. Wait, where was I again? 

Dreams. Right. I want to be. I lied before. Of course I want to be. Who doesn’t want to be? Being is a miracle. Like believing in those candles. Tell me a way to be. Once I know how to do that, I will hold myself together. But for now, my pieces are all over this world. Can I just leave them like that for a while? They aren’t ready to come together. 

Wait, kid. Let me show you the way to your dreams! Just tell me the dream. For once. Tell me what’s a dream again. How to think of it? How to smile with it, cry with it? What’s a dream? Is it the things floating around in bubbles in your head that just pop when it meets another bubble? How do I stop it from perishing? How do I stop the bubbles? 

The bubbles are worlds. Different worlds, different lives I’ve lived over and over again. But where am I now? Is it also a bubble floating around? Will it just pop like other bubbles? Or will I be able to really see it when I grow up? I want to see it as a whole. I want to see how I look when I’m whole, when I’m myself. I’ve been shredding and shredding and shredding but I just can’t seem to get to the actual surface of my skin. What am I? Just another thought inside someone’s head? Just screaming and screeching to get out? Well, I guess not every voice gets to get out from the head. That’s not fair. But that’s just how it works. Guess I’ll just sleep now. All this screaming is getting tiring. Maybe another day, another week, another year will pass by. I have to get out of my head. I have to get out of this bed and run fast. Run away as far as I can before the horizon reaches my feet and then… and then it will be tomorrow and there’s sand beneath my feet, there are waves hitting the shore. I’m there at the beach in front of your house. I have to get out of the head. I promise I will. I promise I will see myself and figure out who I am one day. 

Chapter 1

I was looking at a straight line. It kept going. But was it really straight? Maybe it looks straight to me because I’m just a 3D creature. No, maybe it is a bit crooked. Like my teeth. No, like your teeth. But your smile is so beautiful because of those crooked teeth. You look really happy when you smile, and you don’t even smile that often.

The painting of the roses gets deeper each time I bleed a little. I bleed a little when I search for God. I bleed again when I don’t look after myself. I bleed even more when I do look after myself. The wound dries up and it starts hurting not to hurt anymore. I start feeling less human each time I forget what pain felt like.

I search for God in everything. Even in the absence of something. His smile was so beautiful, for a while, I thought I had found God. But Gods don’t lie in crooked teeth.