Why did that man ask me if I was okay? I never met him and it’s not like I am the most interesting looking person on Earth. Why would my problems be anything big? I would say I’ve got nothing, but that’s not true. If you got nothing, it means you got a problem. So you try desperately to fill nothing, with booze or painkillers or chocolate or shopping or ice cream or one night stands with people you wouldn’t give a second look if you weren’t searching for some meaningless sex. And you cry. In the beginning, you cry a lot and all day long. They say the pain fades and you hope so, but it doesn’t. You get mad at them, those who say that. Because they can’t have been any hurting place or situation if they say it goes away. They know nothing and you get angry at the world. You feel like a teenager, with your pathetic thoughts. You ought to have passed that phase of your life. When you were a teenager, you wished to be an adult and just have it behind you. Once you’re an adult, you look at your fifteen-year-old self and think how lucky you were. I don’t. I look at my fifteen-year-old self and see how I haven’t changed that much. As if becoming 21 rids you of all adolescent stuff. All adolescent problems and worries and pains and fears.

I’m supposed to be a bundle of joy, dancing through life with a huge smile of my face. After all I’m young, intelligent, funny and plain hot. Like I care. I want to be more like who I am supposed to be right now. I want to be able to get over what was a silly crush. It shouldn’t have gone this far. I should have been able to shake it off whenever I wanted to. It should have been light and fun. It wasn’t. It grew into something heavy and weighing, love. Something you don’t forget when you want to, something that lingers and attacks you when you’re asleep, making you dream about her all the time.

And look at you. There you sit, at a diner, wallowing in self-pity. Look how miserable you are. Look how you are even sobbing over your empty cup of coffee that seems to symbolise your empty cup of life. You should move on and you know it.

All those who say that if love isn’t reciprocated, you should get over it. All of you, tell me how. Don’t give me your preeches, your lectures, your knowledge of what to do. Tell me how to do it. Tell me how and I will get up and I will move on.

It’s getting late and it’s getting dark outside. The shift of the previous waitress has passed, another one has come. A cute blonde with the most beautiful hazel eyes and the most genuine smile, softly biting her lower lip as she takes a note, probably not realising it. She looks so young and full of life, how I’m supposed to be. She looks like she’s happy and I hate her for it. Why does she get to be and I don’t? She probably has a boyfriend at home that can’t wait to shag her. That doesn’t understand her innocence is something so pure and rare it should be untouched forever.

After another several hours, she sits down across off me. She has put on a new shirt, revealing a fair amount of cleavage. I try to look into her eyes. We say nothing and we don’t need to. Her sitting down here isn’t weird. Finally she asks me softly.

"Are you a rock or an island?"

"An island."

She takes my hand and I know it. I was here for a reason. We walk out together, heading nowhere. I know. I am about to become a rock.