I woke up at 3 AM in the bathtub filled to the brim with ice cold water. My clothes were sticking to my body like a second layer of skin and my lips were stained red. This is not the first time I have woken up in a place I don’t remember falling asleep. My life has been a series of slow motion pictures lately, I close my eyes for five minutes and before I know it three weeks have gone by. I’m losing myself and it scares me.

“Andrew, sometimes you have to break your own heart to set yourself free,” she whispered in my ear before slinging her ruck **** over her bony shoulders, leaving me at the airport surrounded by thousands of people but only wanting one. I knew this would happen, and I am not saying that because I wanted to be right. From the moment I saw her I knew that we had no future. For the past few months I have been struggling to write, just as I had been struggling to write for years before I met her, Emily was my inspiration. However as I sit here at my computer I am empowered by the fact that I can write, with or without her, I can write about her, about us.

Emily left home when she was 16 years old, for reasons I will never know. From then she was a wanderer, forever on the road. She had no compass inside her, she just kept walking... I used to sit and write in coffee shops, smoking copious amounts of cigarettes while seeking inspiration from the people who passed by. I was so ordinary, almost faking pain, I will never understand why so many people do that. We are all in love with the idea of being messed up.

“What are you doing?” she said as she put yet another cup of black coffee on the ink stained table, “I am an artist” I said without looking up. “No, you’re a cliché.” She said laughing.

Emily was the most honest person I had ever met. We spent that night together, she took me to the beach and walked across the edge of where the ocean met the sand like an acrobat balancing on her tippy toes. The only way I can describe her is daylight, whether that is a compliment or not I let her decide. Emily was true, her reality was no different from my reality only she didn’t hide from her pain – her true pain, not the fantasy of being messed up. However real she was, I couldn’t help but believe that I made her up. She was a drifter, and I was in love with her.