I think it was early Sunday morning. I was on the N train coming from Soho. Another loft party that I survived. Well this one is, more of like a rave actually. A friend of a friend who’s a DJ from Munich is in town, so that friend turned his spacious loft into a fucking rave house. It was fun. I tripped on LSD like a baby boomer from Woodstock. Everywhere I looked, while I danced with everyone, I saw supermodels, beautiful creatures, blessed with stunning and extremely attractive looks, they look so good that they don’t have to do anything. Well, maybe pose and maintain themselves, but other than that, everything, everyone is coming for them. I got so high that I left the party without my hat, scarf, and sweater. Other than that, I had a great time.

As I hopped inside the train, I saw a young woman, dressed in black fur coat staring down. She looked lost. I would say she’s probably in her early twenties. Her appearance reminded me of someone that I used to know. Long dark silky hair, porcelain skin, deep green eyes, she was wearing a blood red lipstick. The rest of the make up on her face was faded, but she was still beautiful. I observed her face and sensed her sadness. A punctured sadness deep within her. I guess, being a depressed person like myself, I could easily notice sadness itself in any place at any time. The more I stare at her, The more her eyes became misty, and eventually tears started streaming down her pretty face. I couldn’t stand to just sit there and be still, it was too painful for me to watch her like that. I looked at everybody on the train and everybody behaved as if they don’t see her. I stood up from my seat and sat next to her but she stood up on the next stop on 34th Street. I followed her, tears are still streaming down her face. I touch the back of her shoulder and she looked back at me.

“Excuse me Miss, are you okay? I asked.

She stared at me with a slight relief and then embraced me and continued to cry. I embraced her back as if I knew her. But at that point, the only thing I truly knew about her was her suffering in silence. After she embraced me, I held her hand and walked her to a nearby coffee shop in Herald Square. Her name was Olivia.

“I’m sorry,” She said.
“About what?” I asked.
“For crying on your shoulders, I’m not like this all the time”
“It’s okay, I know.”
“I never got your name.”
“It’s Lorenzo.”
“Have I told you my name?”
“Yes, you did. So what made you cry on the subway?”

She sipped on her cup of tea before she answered my question.

“I was about to get married and the man I love walked out on me with no explanation. He left me waiting for him in front of the altar. He never arrived, then I got a text from him telling me that he can’t do it and doesn’t want to be something that he’s not. Then he was gone. I loved him so much, he was the love of my life. And I’m such a wreck, we’ve been together for four years and he just left me.”

“I’m so sorry, that’s very fucked up.”
“I know, he was a fucking asshole. I know I’m stronger than this but it’s impossible not to feel anything.”
“We’re all humans.”
“Everyday, I try to ignore my misery but then the more I do it, the more I fall to pieces.”
“You cannot ignore it, but at some point it becomes bearable.”
“It doesn’t go away?”
“No, it doesn’t.”
“What about you? Have you ever loved someone that it almost fucked you up?”
“Yes. I was in love once.”
“Really? What was her name?”
“Hanna, but she’s not from here. She’s from Munich.”
“Did she love you?”
“No, that was the big difference. I told her how I felt about her but she didn’t feel the same. She played with my head a lot.”
“What a bitch!”

I laughed at Olivia after she called Hanna a bitch.

“It was the most destructive chapter of my life and also my happiest. I was happy.”
“What about now? Are you okay?”
“I think so. I got over it after five years.”
“Oh wow, that’s a long time.”
“Yeah, but I think I’m still mending”
“I hope it doesn’t take me five years to recover. I could barely save myself right now.”
“You’re stronger than you think. It takes a spine to be human here in New York.”

After we finished our coffee, Olivia and I embraced again, exchanged numbers, and parted ways. Olivia gave me her sincere thanks before leaving on cab. I decided to go for a walk so I went back downtown to Lower East Side and eventually ended up at Loreley, a German beer garden on Rivington Street. Meeting Olivia reminded me that I wasn’t the only one having a fucked up experience. That a broken person can actually heal. I met someone at the beer garden who offered me a spliff wrapped in a filtered cigarette paper. As I started smoking, my late psychologist, Suzanne Lessing, appeared out of nowhere, smiling at me. She was wearing a brown leather coat, her blonde hair coiffed as always, and a red scarf.

“Meeting other fucked up people like yourself helps does it?” She asked.
“Where the fuck have you been all this time?” I asked.
“Oh I was in vacation in Scandinavia. Beautiful region, I visited Stockholm, Copenhagen, Oslo, and Helsinki.”
“Since when did dead psychologists take vacations? Aren’t you supposed to be dead?”
“Well I am, except, I have to ensure that you don’t fuck everything in your life right now. I mean, I do feel guilty for leaving you behind after I committed suicide.”
“That’s nice of you, I’m not so bad.”
“I know you have this tendency to be compassionate to strangers but be careful.”
“Why?”
“Too much compassion isn’t good. There’s nothing wrong with it, but keep it to certain degree.”
“Can I ask you something?”
“As long as it doesn’t involve the future.”
“Okay, I get it you’re not Nostradamus. But could you at least give me hint on something?”

Suzanne sighed and crossed her arms.

“Fine, I’ll try. What do you want to know?”

A million questions were racing through my mind before I could ask her.

“What will become of me in the end?”

She looked at me with dismay and worry in her face, I know there’s bad news around the corner of my fucking life. I continued to smoke the spliff.

“Lorenzo, you know I cannot be transparent with you about these things.”
“You don’t need to tell me what’s excatly gonna happen, I just need a clue to keep on living.”
“You need to finish writing that novel of yours. You can have that life of luxury that you’ve always wanted.”
“Will I finally become rich and famous?”
“Possibly. But remember one thing, happiness isn’t something that you can create. It’s not guaranteed once you get that bucket of money. Please never forget that.”
“I won’t.”

I put out the spliff on the ground with my foot and when I looked up she was gone. It’s a funny feeling when dead people appear to you while under the influence. I went back home and opened my laptop and started writing. I have no idea what’s the genre of the novel that I’ve been trying to write all this time. But Suzanne’s advice gave me some kind of hope. It feels good when someone believes in you even though that person is already dead. God help me. The more I think of her faith in me, the more I filled the empty pages with words of fiction.