Plastic Bottles

I'm twenty and if I cut my age in half I'd be a whole kid with ten years worth of kid memories. Now, ten years ago, my English teacher warned me not to fill a plastic bottle with water twice because filling plastic bottles with water too many times will do you no good. You see, if the plastic goes bad, the water goes bad, hence, you go bad. What had happened when I was ten was that I completely disregarded my teacher's warning and I've been filling plastic bottles with water too many times ever since. I think I've gone bad. At twelve I thought nobody would ever love me because I used to sweat. A lot. I walked the halls of my school reeking of damp insecurity, with a twist of lime. I started squeezing lemon juice in my water because maybe then the plastic won't go bad and then, maybe I won't go bad. Three years later, nobody loved me still, but I stopped sweating too much. I did, however, start reading and that's when I needed someone to love. Because maybe if I find love I'll find inspiration. You see, I was a James Gatz waiting for a Daisy to turn me into a Gatsby. I was a Mr. Darcy wanting an Elizabeth Bennet to walk up to me and shatter my pride to the ground. I was hopeless and desperate and in need, I was a Holden Caulfield in Manhattan, a Patti Smith in Central park. I was a lost Sputnik. It was when I was fifteen that I realized that I dream at night more than most people do and I dream midday more than most people do too and that's a problem. At fifteen, I cried the way Diane Keaton did in Annie Hall when she missed Alvy, and looked out the window when the car was moving as if there was a whole bunch of people watching me on a theater screen. I lived in a film. I still do. I still wonder whether there lurks a Tyler Durden next to me and I can't see him yet or whether John Steinbeck wrote me off as a Cal or a Lennie. I love Cal. I cried over Lennie. And then I turned sixteen and it didn't feel the way it ought to feel like. That was the disappointment of a lifetime, to say the least. But I did find inspiration in the many days I spent loving a person. The love stopped at nineteen but the inspiration, the idea, the.. the... what was left of it was still there; the feeling lingered. I was still Gatsby. I would forever be Gatsby. At eighteen, I drew a naked woman in Spain in an artist's studio. My lips kissed Dali's grave, I touched the colours of Picasso. I was nineteen and that's when love no longer held meaning. It was just like having to wake up, having to sleep, we don't know why we do it, but everybody does it; everybody sleeps; everybody wakes up; everybody drinks water; everybody pees; everybody loves. I'm not twenty yet but I'm two months short. I fill plastic bottles with water and keep them by my bedside in case I need a sip in the middle of the night and they stay there till morning.