something new. (dedicated to everyone who thinks I'm writing about them. I am.)

Dear friends of real life and the internet;
I have been writing this novel on and off since 2007. Its main purpose has always been to leave something behind. Something that I made with my hands and desktop and thoughts. Over the years I have had the pleasure to hear so many wonderful things because of this novel. 
One big dream is left. The one to actually get this out there. In print. or, as hannah horvath would have it, an e-book. This dream is yet to be realized. I'm in the slow process of re-writing my words (those that I started writing at age 18 with a very limited english vocabulary and even less experience of life, love and loss. So, as you could expect, they need to be processed. They need to be refined. I am going to stop sounding like a douche now. There.) so it might be a while before the thing is finished. (will it ever be?) 

I wanted to give something though. If anyone is still out there waiting.
I hereby give you the prelude. 
 

When our ribs were first invented, they were constructed to support much more weight than now.

But with the original sin piercing into our bones, our ribs slowly lost their strength and made us fragile beings. They were in such a delicate state that they were unable to shield our organs like they were supposed to. Because of this, we since then carry around holes in our hearts. Some holes are made by other people, when they break or steal something that's very dear to us. Others make them by themselves, with mistakes made in their unstoppable youth. I spent years trying to cover up the hole in my heart. Sometimes, if I ran exceptionally fast, I could feel the pressure of air passing through it. It was as if my whole insides were hollow. Inside these fragile ribs, lays different kinds of hearts. As they all have holes in them, they can never become what they really are. So they're forced to become something else. Some are made of teflon. Some are simply fluttering.

My heart was left open, and the hole left bigger. Like an egg without anything left inside. I was left with an eggshell heart.

This is the story of that, and everything else. Our story starts in 2006, when I was seventeen. It ends in 2012, when I've by far, lost count of the days of my youth.

50. FOR YOU I WILL (NOT) WAIT TIL´ KINGDOM COME. (the very last postcard.)

I loved you so much it consumed me completely.
I hope I never get to live thru that again without anything to show for it.
I will always fight for love, even how many times I fail.
But I will never fall for you again, that´s the difference.
I've loved you in five different countries and three different timezones.
And that´s enough.
That´s more than enough for the most unbelivably time-consuming
lovestory and angony of my life.
I do not love you anymore.
I hope I never get to again.
I hope that you will be happy, but most of all,
I hope I will be happy.
Because this is not about you. It´s about me.
Finally I see that.

THE END, of the beginning.

49. leaving hard is full of pain, oh, the aching.

I belive you are not here with me anymore. I belive I am not where you are. I belive that you are somewhere else today, and yesterday and probably tomorrow.
I belive that it is ok for me to let you go,
and I belive that you are the essence and life of my teenage years.
I do belive I will see you again,
and one day the sky will burn and we´ll see if you need me then.
If not, that is ok too.
(Your silence still makes it impossible to forget you.)
Fivehundred and eighty-nine postcards are being removed from the sewar.
The streetlights are on and the roads still whispers the agonys of teenage love and fear.
Somewhere in a park there are two lost young souls discussing a band yet to be discovered by the general public. He is giving her his jeanjacket, whispering something in her ear. The coffemugs keep rolling down the sidewalks as the resturants keep taking orders, keep serving tables, still playing ”Lua” on repeat. And somewhere close, in a neighborhood, a young woman is finally telling her mother that she hates the smell of stew.

48. I don´t want to spend the rest of my days, running around, chasing your shadow.

Love is the weirdest thing. When you don´t have it you want nothing else.
When you have it you are so afraid of losing it.
And when you lost it you wish you´d never had it in the first place.

Well, I will not regret my love for anyone.
I said that I was thru living my life with an eraser in it, and I still am.

So what, if our love did'nt make it? I was not doomed to be without love for the rest of my life just beacuse I did not end up with the first expierence of love in my life!

The ducks sympathetic looks did'nt eat me up inside anymore, nor did the shinsongs.
The story of my life, no, the story of the first years of my life, exclusivly, could have ended with me realizing that my new lover was the one for me and that I would remain the rest of my days with his arms around my waist and his cherrytasting lips on my pillows.
But I choose to not go down that road.
Neither will Saint Simon have an defenitive role as the co-actor of my lovelife.
This is what I wanted to know for so long,
that I did not need them to re-define me,
cause I am not defined by other peoples temporary love for me.

I am defined by me, my actions, my moodswings, my mothers stew and nothing else.

As a teenager you think that your life will always be the same, the people in your life will always play the same roles, the same scripts will be said, day in and day out. But life is not predictable.

Life is not over the day you finish high-school or the day you leave your first love or the day you throw fivehundred and eighty-nine postcards out in the river.
Love is great, embrace it. Feel it in your bones, love the way it makes you feel and curse it´s existance when it lets you down. But never let it own you.

47. You tease the wild autum with lillys of green.

September 9th, the following year.
It is fall and my hair has once again grown down to my waist.
I am walking down the streets of my neighborhood, as I always do this time of year, alone and with the shins talking to me thru my ipod.
I am wearing your leatherjacket just for the sake that it is the only jacket I still own in this city.
The other ones had moved with me. Every year this time a year I think the same thoughts, walk the same miles and see the same faces smiling back at me.

The first chilly winds of the season blows by my naked arms, that are still somewhat brown as an souvenir from summerdays by the sea.
From every angle in my direction the leaves are falling, my hopes and dreams are changing with the seasons and the memories of past years this time a year brings back every single feeling of panic and abandonment in me. The fall has not been the same for years.

46. His side of the story.

Looking back at sunsets on the Eastside
We lost track of the time
Dreams aren't what they used to be
Some things slide by so carelessly

Smile like you mean it
Smile like you mean it

And someone is calling my name
From the back of the restaurant
And someone is playing a game
In the house that I grew up in
And someone will drive her around
Down the same streets that I did
On the same streets that I did

Smile like you mean it
Oh no, oh no no no
Oh no, oh no no no

(the killers - smile like you mean it)

She saw him one day, across the street.
He looked at her and smiled, and she knew that he ment it, that he had moved on aswell.

45. I belive in anything that brings you back, hauting me.

The park was empty of people and the clouds had turned darker above her head.
He was there, sitting in his Shins t-shirt watching the ducks give him sympathetic looks.

She sat down beside him and even though they had not met for months there was no need for introductions, hugs, kisses or something in particular to be said or done.
Even so he looked at her feet beside his and started to talk.

-When I came back this fall, I walked by the sewar, you know, where the water from the big bridge ends up before running out into the ocean?

-Yes.

- It was the oddest thing I´ve seen.
There were about fourhundred postcards in a bunch, cloging the water.

- Fivehundred. Fivehundred eighty-nine postcards.

- I figured it was you.

- You are correct then, mister.

- I´m sorry.

- It´s ok.

And it was. It takes time to neautralize a person you have felt almost every feeling towards.
But time makes you forget and it makes you realize what was real and what was not.
They were real, but in a way that legos are real for a 4-year old kid.
It´s more magical from the inside, at that time in your life.
Afterwards you see the scraps, the bad parts aswell as the good.

- How´s your girl nowadays? , she asked sincerly.

-I don´t think she´s my girl anymore, she never calls or anything.

- Yeah, I know the feeling. Sometimes people just stop. I belive that it goes in cycles.

Ouch, message recieved. I know that I was a jerk, and I´m sorry for it. I just. can´t.

- I know. It´s ok. You grow out of it, life goes on, you forget.

- Maybe you do.

- Yes.

- But I´ll never forget you. Or grow out of love for you. Don´t you know that you´re my first?
First love that is. You never forget your first love.

- You don´t?

- You do?

- I think I just did.



She was free. And it did´nt hurt, she did not feel empty or ashamed or embarrased of the words that had just came out of her mouth. She did not feel regret or sorrow, nor for her or for him. She knew that she was in his mind aswell. That was enough.

- Will you forget about me completely?

- Your silence makes it impossible to forget you completely, babe.