JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

I hate you because you have written a novel I wish I had written.

There are many novels I wish I had written, but I do not hate their authors. There is no point in hating those authors because even if I wish I had written their novels I could not have written them. I do not have the experience, the stamina or the words.

But this, your novel, I have lived. I have been the angry child railing and cringing at the horror of the “grown-up” world. I have known the loneliness so deep that it never hits bottom but keeps on plummeting, desires so fierce they singed everything in their path and reduced me to a column of ash floating off the tip of a cigarette. I lived it, but you wrote it.

I heard myself think, If this book was written by a 20-year-old I quit. But then you referred to The Smiths, The Cure, late Pink Floyd, and I realized you were my age. That at least is a relief. That and the realization that I will always be that angry child, that I will never be one of them.