The book

This is the part where I tell you how healing the writing was. How the words poured out of me like therapy. How I emerged transformed.

Bullshit.

I write because the alternative is screaming into a pillow. And I've done that already. Done all the things you do when your head gets too loud to live in.

It's a book about loneliness in a foreign city. About wanting someone and being terrified of having them. About being smart enough to recognize your patterns and too fucked up to break them.

There's no redemption. No wisdom. No chapter where I figure it out. Still waiting on that one.

It's about a girl who's still standing. Barely. After years of a life that felt like it belonged to someone else.

It'll make you laugh. It'll make you wince. And it'll make you very glad you're not me.

Someone will call this New Adult. Someone can try. New Adult is a product. Designed, tested, packaged. Same ingredients every time. One girl, one guy, one city that exists only as a backdrop for their eye contact. The girl is always almost brave. The guy is always almost kind. The sex is always almost real. Almost. Everything in New Adult is almost. Almost honest. Almost raw. Almost alive. But never quite. Because quite would be ugly. And ugly doesn't sell.

This diary is ugly. Not all of it. But enough. The mornings are ugly. Some of the men are ugly — on the inside, where it counts. Some of my decisions are ugly. Sofia is ugly sometimes, in that beautiful way cities are when they stop performing for tourists. And I'm ugly in here too. Petty. Wrong. Selfish. Human.

New Adult would never let Clover be ugly. That's why Clover isn't real.

Price of a coffee. You've wasted more on worse.