It was pure chance that the day I skipped class to go to church, I packed a new book to read.

I will never truly recall why, perhaps sheer desire to stray away from another hour of advanced mathematics, in an overcrowded classroom, where the two windows allowed very little sunlight to peer in. Choices weren’t many, either endure an elongated period of suffocation, loathing every fraction of time as I felt the judging gaze of too many eyes shred my cover and scratch straight into the darkness already engulfing half my being, or choose to hit pause and reset.

Perhaps this came from feeling perfectly mundane, leading a life for others, making it fairly easy to hold on to exterior means for freedom, clutching on fictional tales like the only lifesaver pulling me above water, in a world that’s nothing but an endless ocean. Easy decisions, minor consequences, I grabbed my pack and out the gates I went, roaming the streets of Tirana, looking for a place to sit and stew in my own thoughts, away from the grizzly sky on a miserable looking Tuesday afternoon. My feet brought me to the new Orthodox church in the center of the city. I had been here before to reflect, recite a silent prayer and admire every piece of progress on the developing frescos.

This church was always empty, readily receiving my never-ending chain of concerns and delivering seconds of peace. I was never particularly religious and had questioned my faith many times in my early years, yet this church had become my only solace away from life, away from my superimposing family, away from shame and internal struggle. It served as an isolated vacuum for me to test my inner theories without friction or gravity, and it served me well.

This Tuesday, I pulled out “The Black Obelisk” from my pack, a heavy book that fell with a thump on my lap as I opened it on page one. This was one of the only times I ever read in Church, as I merged myself with Remarque’s masterful narration of all kinds of life’s disappointment in post-WWI Germany. Although the characters’ lives were connected to the country’s socio-economic state, the many chunks of soul and humanity on the page made such writing relevant to the mood taking root inside me. That book was my first step in recognizing and understanding writers of the lost generation; trapped souls scarred from war and dysfunction, always seeking means to keep senses numb and memories dull.

Stories of pain and inevitable tragedy can become loyal friends to your own and guide you through a path of healing. Such stories keep me company at night, whenever I am left alone with my thoughts, or processing the past. I am now convinced that embracing the end shouldn’t appear to be a sign of surrendering, but a strength of facing the world as it is. This is what books taught me, strength to take the world in.

Yet again, I am back to listening to the same damn Nirvana songs I listened in my bedroom at the age of 15. Somehow my feelings, my diappointment, my discouragement and rage towards the world has not changed one bit. These songs, I tell myself, are a way to channel my anger, to not yell at myself, to not yell at inanimate objects. And yet, somehow, at 24 this anger feels different. I am in no position to be so codependent to a feeling that I had forever stopped looking for, or at least that is what I told myself. I am running from my own thoughts. The curious thing about my brain is that it never stops regenerating new thoughts, new concerns, new paranoia that straight up eat my tissue and much like acid, transform my pleasant memories and impressions, into wrinkly, ugly, bitter pieces of very green olives. It is the very true image of what happens to every lovely thing that ocurred in my life. I cannot control these thoughts, I cannot seem to contain them. I am terrified of the sound of my own thoughts when I fall asleep at night, or even at moments of rest during the day. What’s more: I am convinced that I am not the only one.

Trying to wrap my head around how I manage to trigger this very powerful and real darkness, I can only think how unbearable it seems to exist and understand people’s actions. I have slowly realized that I was not brought up in proportion to the real darkness of the world. My disappointment, my lack of social awareness and the lack of an unspoken harmony has grown. At times, I have hugged my darkness, found myself on the floor unable to breathe. Had people around me say that I am weak for letting this world get to me, but I do not know otherwise. In any moment of my life I would forever choose happiness. How do I let the existence of all things inconsiderate, intolerant, and lust not get to the core of my head. So I am running, away from the silence before falling asleep.

I am saved by my words...