by Anais Escobar

Most days, I don’t think of you. I go through the day unaware of your existence in the universe, filling the familiar aches with books and new records and jogs and new faces. My brain is smart and tries to fool me for a while. For a minute, it almost seems as if you never happened at all until the tiniest thing sets me off. Memory is a cruel thing and sharpest when it needs not be. I check my voicemail and hear a saved message from you, one of you imitating Tom Waits to make me laugh when I checked it after class or work, and I feel my throat close up. Tears fill my eyes and I realize that this will be the last voicemail I ever receive from you; this one doesn’t even have an i love you in it, it’s just pure Tom Waits impersonation. I end the call and rub my eyes.

I go about my day and put in my headphones as I shop. Shuffle plays me a song that you put on a mix for me and it all begins again. I cry in Target in between the hair care products and the moisturizer and I realize that nothing is over, that my heart, my habits have not caught up with my ever-wise brain. I’m never alone now except when I’m about to fall asleep and I hope each night that I’m so exhausted that I just crash in to my sheets and black out, a pile of tired bone and sinew. I want to shut off my functions so the thoughts in my head don’t reach the rest of my body. I don’t sleep, I’m unconscious for a few hours a night. 

I’ll tell you about it. Writers are like aliens. They string words of proportions to make people understand and see what their views yet behind all these, they have their own planets, they have their own language that even people of their own kind don’t get to fathom, at least most of the times. Writers are boring. They tend to look at the sky without particularly knowing why, or which part of the sky they’re staring at. They swoon over silver clouds while talking to a bunch of alter egos they always drag within them. Don’t fall in love with a writer. They love weaving magic carpets of words that will lift your poor soul far beyond the fray and cacophony of heartache and strife and will carry you to a realm of fantasies and dreams. Still, remember that words are words and fantasies are fantasies and that essays are just essays.

Writers have the most deadly temper and the quickest switch-on switch-off mood. They are slaves to their emotion and can dramatize even a rusty leaking faucet. They justify everything in the name of their art. They read other people’s receipt and tend to eavesdrop at a couple having coffee nearby, not minding that you’re at his side, telling the most awesome tales of ants trailing the sidewalk. This, of course, is justifiable by saying “it’s research.”

Also, writers give the cheapest of cheapest gifts. They’ll dote you with cards made of milk cartons with a written four-verse poem that doesn’t even rhyme. They’ll bring you flowers handed to them by admirers and would sometimes write “I love you” in your arms. Because state of poverty, to writers, are major avenues of their calling. They look at themselves as creatively complex and hard to understand in a Pablo Picaso cubism sort of way individuals since suffering is art. And because life in the media industry can be a cruel and a fickle beast, they can’t accept just any job. It has to serve their purpose. It has to contribute to a general public and must live to their philosophy yet, still, pinch a nerve near the heart.

Even the most intimate details of your relationship could most of the times turn up in their writings. And although they are mightily concealed behind metaphors and allegories, you, of course, will still recognize them. It’s all about you after all.

Although they never really intend to insult you, they will sheepishly remind you that “your” and “you’re” are different and that “despite” is the right one and “despite of” is the wrong one. I’m telling you, they’ll notice the smallest of details about you as an orgy of your descriptions are banging wildly inside their heads. Yes, even the color of your socks.

Conversations with them are tough. They will talk about characters in books and art films as if they’re real, as if they’re someone tangible, someone he recently got a chance for a vis-à-vis over some tea and biscuits. Annoyingly, they have this habit of writing parts of your conversation on some dank piece of tissue paper. And like lawyers, everything you said is valid and can be used in favor or against you in future discussions.

Probably the hardest one to understand is their addiction to solitude. It might not be close to that of Ernest Hemingway’s seclusion, but a time alone is always a must. It’s not a snob. It’s not barricading. But in solitude, not only he is gathering his thoughts, formulating sets of theories, but also re-arranging himself.

But writers are one of the most romantic people you’ll ever meet. They’re lamentably passionate and will adore you for the most natural thing about you. For they don’t succumb to the societal dictates of beauty and form. You are an abstract masterpiece seen in a philosophical beautiful way. They are phenomenally too human that even their tears are sometimes trails of fluid words. They’re achingly martyrs and they can tell you in thousand ways how much you mean to them, how much they adore you and how much they love you.

So don’t fall in love with a writer. Don’t fall in love with me.