No matter what I keep coming back to the darkest corner of the wooden table. Only now, I notice a full year has passed. Every day for a year I have been staring at the blank paper right in front of me. It is still white, pure, unchanged.

Have you ever seen a tornado? I stand right in the eye of a tornado, it feels quiet and empty, and so do I. How am I supposed to write down on this piece of paper when I am not even capable of feeling? I feel no pain, nor love, nor joy.

I strongly believe that people do not change just the circumstances do, and so they did. I wanted them to change. I still remember the day I left, every detail. Even the minute I woke up. Seven o’clock in the morning and for the first time I didn’t felt like I needed five more minutes of sleep, as I always do. My heart started racing, I felt the beat in my head and in my stomach. I brushed my teeth for way too long lost in the chaos inside me. It was perfect that no one was home.
I was craving some fresh croissants from the small shop across the street; I still remember how the shop smelled that morning. I ordered croissants for two, made smoothie for two. We made sure the sheets of the bed I had slept in since I was six smelled like salty skin after ***. We took a shower, shampooing each other’s head and fooling around like everything was fine. We smoked a cigarette in silence, knowing words would ruin too much. We said goodbye. I finished packing. My whole life was in that flat, that room, and all I was taking with me was a suitcase. I got dressed and took a look in each room. I knew I was not only about to leave my home, family, my friends and lover behind, I was about to leave the way everything felt back then. I knew nothing would remain the same. I was about to leave behind my life and start a new one.

Now I am going through life like a ghost trying to figure it out. Stuck between past and present. Living now and craving yesterday. Going back to yesterday and not feeling the same way I used to.

It was New Year’s Eve, so I booked a ticket, wanting to go home. My parents had bought a new flat right after I left; it was amazing, but not what I needed. I wanted to finally see and smell something familiar, I had had enough of changes. Everything was new, full and empty at the same time. A lot of material stuff and no memories. Everyone seemed the same, but they weren’t. I had missed too much of their daily basis, great and little moments, I wasn’t there, neither were they.

We were drinking some cheap wine at our favorite place and laughing at nonsense jokes, right in that moment something broke inside of me and pieces of it still break every time little by little. I feel no pain, nor love, nor joy. Maybe that is why I spend so much time collecting pictures, post cards, and old bills back from nights we used to drink our so-called pain away. Or maybe that’s why I watch movies I used to like when I was 16 and silly, maybe just trying to hold on to something that feels like home. I race back to the times when a cigarette wasn’t the solution of my problems, because I just want to be able to feel something again.  

But tell me how is it even possible to stay the same when all we have got is a precious knowledge of self-destruction?