Keyframe

New York, I Love You.

"We're having some kind of powerful, weird alchemy, and you have to pay attention when that happens. This stuff is not to be treated lightly."

- New York, I Love You (2008)

Alejandro

Memories are twisted, heart-breaking, unforgiving little things.

I've been alive for almost nineteen years, and there are plenty of things about my life that I love to remember. But recently, almost everything about my immediate past I want to forget.

The good things remain at the back of my head—like treasure buried by layers and layers of darkness. Clean-sweeping science fairs, summers with my extended family in Colombia, jet-setting all over Europe with my mom, and hanging around with beautiful women that were way too old for me on the sets of her photoshoots. Bright, precious souvenirs of a life I shouldn't have traded in.

But the bad memories, the ones I'd do anything to forget, play on repeat in the forefront of my mind. 

I swipe through my camera roll, each photo from the last four years mocking me. Every swipe, every snapshot of euphoric debauchery, reminds me of the worst time in my short life.

I can practically smell the perfume and liquor in every scene of a late-night party. This girl taking a selfie with my naked, unconscious body...I don't even recognize her. I destroyed my relationships with most of the people in these pictures—friends and girlfriends and family—for no reason other than the fact that I could. 

And then come extended gaps in the camera roll: me spending intermittent weeks or months staring at the walls of a psychiatric hospital in Connecticut, or Rhode Island, or wherever my family could think to put me so I wouldn't embarrass them anymore. I'd come back shiny and new with some excuse for where I was—just for it to happen all over again.

"Alejandro."

I look up from my phone at our housekeeper Paola, who's dressed in her nicer uniform because the guests for my joint graduation party with Jordan will start arriving soon. A beat of silence passes between us, and I lock those memories away with the click of a button.

"¿Sí?"

"Tu mamá. She asked for you."

I inhale, filling my chest with air in an attempt not to sigh.

"Gracias."

She dips her head at me, closing the door to my room and leaving me alone with my thoughts once more. I turn over my shoulder and throw my phone onto my bed—right next to my cap and gown.

I went away again in the middle of this semester. After months of being on top of the world, of being a diligent, high-energy machine, my euphoria turned dangerous once more. Once upon a time, the elation I felt helped me become the premier student at my NASA internship, get accepted into Stanford, and return to my rightful place at the top of our class after a little shudder from my last episode. But then it took me down. Hard.

I've had numerous emotional rollercoasters in the past; they've come and gone in a pattern ever since I started high school. First it's good energy—I'm productive and invincible. And then that invincibility gets dangerous; I try to run into traffic naked and jump off of the Brooklyn Bridge. More often than not I'll get tucked away in another state with shrinks asking me an endless stream of questions. For a few months after that—nothing. I'm fine. And then, suddenly, a wave of sadness and apathy crashes against me from behind. No matter how many times it's happened already, I never expect it.

This past year, my irrationality made me bite off more than I can chew. My family rushed in to make it—her—disappear along with the scandal, but it was at that point that I had enough. I'm the one in control here, no matter what my brain tells me.