With her fingers lightly gripping the quill, the black ink smeared on her fingers and across the paper, if I may paint her clumsiness and lack of etiquette, she tried to write him another letter. But what was there for her to write about? After all, they had never met. She had seen him once from the crowd as she watched his fingers dance across the keys of a pianoforte while clutching her mother’s hand to calm her nerves.

I used to believe in something, like stars being the souls of the lost—my father being one of them. I also used to read fairy tales over and over again. I believed that I would spend an eternity loving the same boy I fell for when I was nothing but a child. I had my whole life written in fantasy and laid out in front of me. On some days, I fought dragons; on other days, I cradled the scorching sun in my arms and called it a lover.

How many times in my life have I felt completely overwhelmed by the tide of emotions and the ensuing silence of a depression that could incapacitate even the strongest of men? Some say it is the natural flow of life. “There is beauty in the ups and downs” —but I feel as if I am in the sea, desperately keeping myself afloat.

Only to be engulfed by the tide behind.