That’s what she wrote in a notebook she found in her room. Not on the first page but one in the middle, at random, so as not to give it too much importance, because even with pen in hand she still rebelled against the idea. Starting a diary now, at this point in her life, sounded like a childish and sappy thing. And dangerous, too; it seemed dangerous to write her feelings down. Of course, she’d kept diaries before, lots of them, from fifth grade through her senior year. Every day, religiously, even if she didn’t have anything to say. Back then she’d used coded language, aware of the risk the diaries ran, alone and defenseless in her bedside table drawer when her mother did the cleaning. Back then she’d written to someone, as if she were writing a letter; not to the diary or some omniscient voice, but to herself. A letter to the woman she would be in the future. For some reason she didn’t want to forget anything that happened to her. She had been sure that when she reached the age she was now, she would go back and read them, and a glint of pride would shine in her eyes, maybe a little smile of complicity. But the diaries were gone; she’d put them in a garbage bag in one of her moves. It didn’t make sense to keep lugging them around, they were too heavy.

She started to write soon after returning to her mother’s apartment. One Saturday night when not even cigarettes or pills could assuage her. She was in her room in the dark, looking out the window at the sparkling city, listening to the elated cries of people going to or from some party in Bellavista.

One of those people who never stopped partying.

A day for self-pity.