Hi.
It's Nina.

In my room, there is a sluggish, wooden drawer, filled up to the brim with dozens of diaries. Stories from bustling cities, whose energy has kept me up all night, propelled me forward with harshness and curiosity to catch the 2am-magical-encounter, the glimmer of novelty and wonder, the taste of what it means to be living, right on the edge of exhaustion and inspiration.

For years, I kept walking the fine line down dubious sidewalks between growth and overstrain. At home – whatever that may mean – I would soothe my tired eyes and heavy head with the comfort of my world, resolve into fantasy and fears. Is it strange that entrenched terrors can be reassuring, too?

Wrapped in the blanket of sweet rest, I become restless. I wandered back to the girl in the closet, shy and angry, staring out the window into the Bavarian Forest while praying to her life-sized canvas of Central Park for a better sky with brighter stars. Only to find that the stars don’t shine at all in New York.

All there was left to do was write.

About being left in a cabin in the woods in the middle of an avalanche night and finding the way down on my own, after giving everything and getting nothing in return.

About sheltered childhoods and failed families, the golden memories that had to be gagged and locked away quietly in my heart, and the tedious dream that maybe someday they can sing again.

About escaping a meticulously crafted and foul co-web of love and learning to leave no trace behind.

About always wanting more and still lacking, an exemplary cycle of ancestral unconsciousness that is waiting to be broken.

About depression and disorder, about bending to fit in and breaking under the weight of alienation. About being owned by the search for anything that could turn our fleeting, minor existence into something that surpasses wars and apathy and allows us to keep living the absurdity of this world, at least for a bit longer.