We live in the same world. We breathe from the same air, detracted from the same sand, broken into the same sky. We like perfection. We like dreaming big. We don’t believe in fairy tales, but we’ve been told we should give them a chance. We like rules, but our own. We see the world, not in black and white, but in depth, no matter the color.
I write, not to make you happy, but to make you believe. I write endlessly and in between daydreams. I write in my dreams and my nightmares. I write when I make coffee, when I take a sip, when I have a glass of white wine. I write for pleasure and pain and bitterness and sweetness and misery and happiness. I write the way you see the world. I write to be ambiguous, but to make you think. I write without thought. I write like water that overflows in the bathtub.
My mother and father could have written the past and it would have been so much easier for me to imagine feeling what they felt. My mother could have written the entire history of her pains and losses. My father could have written the entirety of his loneliness in those five years without her. He could have written what happened to him and his children without her. He could have written what it was like to live like that, tired and shaken, broken and shattered. My mother could have written her anger and her shame, her unwritten, damaged soul.
My sister does not believe in that kind of writing; she does not believe the entire world needs to feel our losses and pains. But what if we teach people through our losses and pains? What if our memories and experiences change the way people look at pain and gratitude and forgiveness? What if our written pasts make their today different in color?
My brother writes to share what happened to him. He writes the things I want all of them to write. He writes and I cry with him sometimes. I sob uncontrollably for a past I am attached to but never lived. I read and think and pause, close my eyes, and a heavy air of sadness goes through my body. I see him when I read. I see him and imagine their life and wonder what a stranger imagines.
We all write. Some of us keep it inside, under our eyelids and lashes, inside washed out pockets and hidden drawers. Some of us are afraid to tell the world about our fears and what happened to us. Some of us only move on when we tell someone else.
I like that you and I live in the same world. I like that you like how I write. I like that you admire and cherish my thoughts. I like that you read and it never becomes too much. Or maybe I like to think that’s how you think. At the end of the day, when I still haven’t heard from you, I like to remember the past and the way we used to write, simple and uncensored, how our feelings didn’t matter, or the years that separated us.
I am done writing for the night, but I see that what I wrote doesn’t matter to strangers. There is nothing to be attached to because they don’t know you and I won’t tell them.

As I sit here, under the cool fan, I feel a bitterness that I cannot quite explain. I feel that no matter how hard I try, no matter how tough I tell myself to be, I am just as attached as I were two years ago. I feel that he can fill in the emptiness I feel inside and on every blank page I struggle to write on. I feel that my anger is not towards him, but towards his lack of words.
Like him, I feel bitter about the world and our future as citizens of this flawed world. I have no faith that the next generation will prosper; we have abused all and everything that has been given to us; we have exhausted our resources, our earth, and the entire greenery. We are torn by a thunderstorm that deprives us of our wonderful, 24/7 electricity that we rely on with full dependency. We are angered when the power is gone and we are left with no Internet connection. A flicker of light frustrates us because we know nothing can be done without it.
We complain about the president we elected as a people and yet continue to show little interest towards the next election. We yell about gas prices and still go and buy that second car we always wanted.
Maybe the bitterness I feel is not just an outcome of selfishness and arrogance. Maybe the bitterness I feel has deeper roots that rise from my surroundings, my family, and ordinary strangers. Maybe I too want people to care. Maybe I too am sick of mediocrity and the ignorance of youth.
I can only write about the bitterness I feel. I can only say that I am angry for our losses in Iraq, our apathy that led to the war, our arrogance that made us believe liberty and democracy would save us in the end. What gives us this privilege to watch as the world falls apart, starves from malnutrition, and breaks by earthquakes and tsunamis? What makes us so special to expect Starbucks to satisfy our thirst and fast food to alleviate our insatiable hunger? Are we entitled to these rights because we are governed under liberty and the pursuit of happiness? Are we entitled because of the American dream that promises and urges us to buy our happiness at all costs?
I love America. I love that I am a citizen of this great land. I also believe that we are too greedy and too obsessed, too individualistic, too arrogant. Why should I, a 20 year-old who has suffered nothing and no hardship, believe that I could be a great writer? Why am I selfish enough to do anything to make myself happy? Who gave me this right? Who said that I am free to do whatever I please?
My bitterness does not end here. There is a constant battle within me; a battle I have been fighting and will continue to fight. The battle I fight involves, of course, the writer within me that despises my illusions and idealism, finds me miserable and selfish. Perhaps I have become so obsessed with my illusions of greatness that I am blinded by the little happiness that is all around me. Perhaps I am so deluded that I have lost my rationality and logic. Perhaps it is my destiny to be unfulfilled, obsessed and insatiable.
I will fight. I will not stand to see the world fall before me. I will not be miserable because the world is not great. I will not doubt my ability to better myself. I have been given a great gift and I must do all I can to give back.
As I sit, watching the dark skies fall behind me, I wonder what tomorrow will feel like. I only hope that this bitterness dissipates so that I can see the full brightness of this house that, like you said, has come out of a storybook.

Yesterday I tried to write fiction, and failed again. I am too accustomed to writing realities and I blame it on you. After two years, I still write with the same notion that the things that happen to us everyday are what make a story real.
I used to think Spain changed me as a writer. I always think different places change my writing. I don’t think I changed. I think I still write the same way. Only there are no stories now. There is my Mac notebook, a house that doesn’t quite belong to me, and my father who washes the dishes silently. I ask him to wait, to let me wash them later. I insist that he is tired from work. Just a few minutes ago, he was falling asleep on the magazine. He is just as stubborn as my mother and goes ahead and places the dishes in the washer.
The day is hot, and only getting more unbearable as the sun sets. I have had my coffee. I am not in the mood to do anything productive. I feel stale. I am savoring life, but I feel that my writing is failing me. I don’t like to use the word fail, but I’ve already done it three times.
I wonder if I have tried hard enough to be a good friend. I wonder if I have made sense. Maybe I have said too much. Maybe I am confusing. Maybe I should have…
I am angry because I feel that I am losing you. I am angry that I cannot make you see. I have talked too much about what my life is and what my needs are as a dissatisfied 20 year-old. I have had expectations. Too many of them. I am angry that you don’t talk to me. I am angry that you think before you hit send. I am angry that I am talk, and you always change your mind about disclosure. I am angry that I never know what it is you want, what it is I can give. I am angry that I don’t know my place in your life. But I am not angry enough to forget and give up and stop. I am not angry enough to stay angry. I am not angry enough to move far away. I don’t care when you will talk, but I am not giving up. I will be writing. I will be waiting. I won’t give up.
Yesterday I tried. Today, I am going to try harder. This is what you told me. This is what you said many times over. I thought my goal in life would be to change the world with writing. But I realized how unrealistic that would be. So now, I am only writing to better myself and to inspire and to feel happy. I think that if I make one person smile, then I have changed something in a very small way. I am asking you to do the same, to stop wanting to change everything that is fucked up. I am asking that you start living, without boundaries, but with joy.
I don’t want to change the world. I just want to write. I come from a family that has wanted to change a whole country. I come from a family that has had high expectations, idealistic dreams and grandeur imaginations. I am not like them. I have learned that if you live your whole life just to change the world, you forget to live for yourself, and instead you become trapped in a prison of impossible dreams.
I know what to say and I am saying it: people may not give a damn or thank everyone who helps them, but there is always someone whose life is changed along the way, and that is what makes all the difference.
I am going to think of a new story line now, and make a cup of tea, and think of realities.