I found an old note the other day, addressed to Dear beautiful girl.

It was left among old note pads and papers in between ramblings typed out on my typewriter. The edges had become worn, and you could feel the bumps on the back of the page from where rough hands had become overzealous on the keys. I don’t remember where it’s from, I don’t remember who wrote it, it must have been a long time a go, when someone loved me or someone wanted to be remembered. They sat there in the dark of my old apartment, one of them anyway, with a dingy light and unaccustomed hands and wrote down these words because I was the beautiful broken girl. And this person, this boy, wrote about me as this beautiful broken girl, so fragile in the world, so unequivocally sad. He spoke of my eyes and my hands and my sorrow like it was the best thing about me, like it was the only thing about me. Yes I know that sadness is a draw and it just pulls you in and makes you want to rescue me but, don’t. Because I wrote my best when I was sad, and I made art because I thought otherwise I would explode. Back then I wanted to be happy, wanted to be happy so badly I would think about it all the time. I would look up at the new buildings being erected and wonder who lives there, look at successful people and wonder why I didn’t have what it took to be them.

And now here I am, sitting on the floor in a nice room, in a place I didn’t know I could be and I miss the sadness, I miss having nothing to lose. Countless hours spent mourning over the loss of something I didn’t have and now, now I have it. Now I have it and the urge is gone, and the pain is gone, and even though I never thought I would, I miss it.

 
Countless