Referees don't fall in love.

To erase New York

En la esquina de mis hojas escribo una receta de tiramisu sin lactosa para cocinar y llevar a tu departamento. En el centro de la hoja escribo esto.
Everytime I cook, I remember this book I read in high school. Como agua para chocolate, is a book you would never read, and it's not important and I didn't even liked it, but many things about it sticked to me.
The way that when she cooks, all her emotions go into the food, and when they eat they all feel it. If only I could make a pie thinking of you so you like me as much as I do. I turn off the stove. I stare into the wall and the kids ask me what's the next step.
If only you'll imagine how big things like this can be in my head, all the deep thoughts. All the love.
Cause while I tell them to stir gently, they look at me like I'm a genius, and I think I hope some day I can do the same with my kids,and a subtle fear tickles my back.
I keep cooking with them, they make me laugh. Kids love in a different way. Kids understand what's in your heart and grown ups are the ones that mess up.
I cook for you, they help, I think, and they ask. One of them looks at me while I'm lost in the wall and asks what am I looking at, and I say I'm just thinking and she asks: about love?
It's weird how they know. They always know. She always knows even when I don't.
I laugh and  I keep cooking, the only thing that comes to my mind now, it's that map. There's a map in New York library, a place where everyone puts their finger to point where they are, until that place in the map has completely been erased. The map is full of names but New York is a blank space, erosion did a good work.
When I was fifteen I saw a picture of that map, and got burned into my mind. I never understood why, but now I do.
That's how I feel about sex. Ever since I was young I had this non rational fear, that once my body was touched by dozens of man, a part of me will disappear. I was never able to figure out how you can sleep with someone and not ending up giving a piece of you to them.
I desire to hear I'm yours so badly, I want you to erase me from everyone's map. I want to exist only in your eyes, in your own personal map. I want you to take me and poison all my bad thoughts. Cause I'm surrounded by all this streets, all this small cities, all this paper towns, and I don't even want to be here. Cause when I tried to disappear, to lose what gave me so much pain, I met you and I knew I could never be that girl.
So I healed all the past, made it just a distant memory, worked on not feeling fear ever again. Even if I try, I can't be the girl of a thousand beds, even if my own father thinks so, even if the whole world thinks I'm a slut. I don't care about my reputation cause I know what I am, and people will always talk on behalf of women's lives. That's a fact that I accepted long time ago, when someone made me seem a slut in front of the whole town. Its a witch trial, and I lost. I thought that by turning into all what they said I was, I would find freedom, but I feel freedom by standing next to you, even thought you are looking the other way.
Even when you don't look at me, my eyes stay in your back, even when you are haunting outside, I wait by the door like a loyal dog. Even when you look the other way each time you know you are a good mistake for a girl who tried to be bad, even when you know I'm going home and I'll write about this.
Even when you don't exist on that map, cause you left a part of you in Philly. We both know that it made you change, loosing yourself into a woman, you'll never go there again.
I wouldn't have asked you to do that for me, but I would have never felt loved by you. I'm too smart to fall for that, and you know. That even if you would have lied to me just to make me feel okay, I just would have laughed.
The thing about not being loved when you are young, is that you don't know were to learn. A couple of years ago I thought control was love, and violence was just passion. I learned from the pain what was real love, cause I was the only one providing it. I never felt loved by a man. I think my heart it's not were my mind is. I always fall hard for guys like you. Men who have been erased from the map and want to stay that way, men who will not make their heart beat again just to love you.
The more I know you, the more numb you seem to me. You looked like what I used to look a year ago. You look like "numb is the new manly man". You look like cigarettes are your only friends and your smile only exists to flirt with girls. You must feel really superior under all the attractiveness but I always try to look behind your ego and narcissistic attitude.
I barely can see your heart sometimes, I know it's there cause you've been living a nightmare for two years just to please your family in all the ways you can provide.
I go back to cooking, the map now looks like my wall. The picture of New York it's so burned in my eyes that I still think about it. I see it everywhere. I'll think about this all week.
I'll tell you about the map on the weekend, but I'll never tell you how bad you erased the airport of my map. I'll never tell you how empty I would leave my soul if you would've told me you are going to pour a little of your love inside my thoughts . You'll never know that I stop breathing when you are too close, how slow and little air I need in my lungs. You never seem to notice that my chest doesn't even move when you put my face next to yours, you only notice How bad I look for your eyes. You use to avoid them cause you know I'm capable of looking inside. You avoid them now cause you think I'm just looking for intimacy, but I just wonder where you put your heart, did you shove it in the back of your mind?
It's hard for me to think you'll ever be able to love again. You would say "I'm capable I just won't be a simp" or "I can, just not in the same way a woman can". And I will think that you'll never find a good worthy woman thinking like that. Cause we all know where love is, so you can find yourself a woman that likes to lie to herself, a woman that can look the other way while you sleep with someone else, a woman that gets used to your bad habits and silently suffers by the things she'll never have.
You can provide the sky, the moon and the stars, but there are things you can't deny. Love is not a grocery list, it's not about buying the best product in the store, the one that has the best qualities. Love is a flower store, and you buy the flowers that look pretty even though all of them are equally pretty, you buy the ones your mom liked a lot when you were a child, you put them in your house and change the water everyday. You can give them a really nice flowerpot but if you don't keep them in clean water they'll die. You do that until one day you take a piece of them and plant them in the garden. All flowers do the same, all flowers are just flowers, beautiful in a weird way, but we all choose one just by heart, by memories, by the smell, by the facts we can know about that kind of plant. But you'll never know, cause "real men don't give flowers". You'll never know cause you are just looking at Walmart for the best quality product and we both know that's cheap af.
I don't think you deserve me, and you don't think I deserve a man like you. I think we get the love we think we deserve. The things is I always look forward to love, not to be loved.
And when it comes to be loved, no one can reach the standard.
I learned from you, but I certainly will never learn how I deserve to be loved by a man, cause that's not something you'll ever know a lot.
It makes me sad to think you'll always stay the same. I hope you find someone that rewrites the name of your city in the map, someone that can make you doubt about the existence of long lasting happiness, about joy and gratefulness. Someone who makes you remember where god is and who you are.
I hope the best for you cause even if I love you, I'll never learn to be selfish enough to want you for myself. I know that we don't deserve each other.
Take them to your bed till you you get sick of it, break them apart, make them fall in love, till you realize how far from what you should be you are. Get lost in Miami or another city, sin till Christian god is just a joke in every bible word, go crazy thinking you still have control.
That's the thing about women. We are irrationally dumb with some stuff, but most of us seem to understand the future that awaits for the ones that follow that path. Women can be delusional to the core, but we get what it is to love. We can't imagine how empty, how deep the void it's when you never feel it that hard.
Get someone who brings peace, but the peace that blows clouds away, the peace that brings the sun, the beach sun, the sound of the waves and the salt that makes your skin get stronger.
I hope the best for your long lost soul. I hope one day we meet again, even if the odds are against ourselves. I hope one day I see you before your 30s, and I think that you look so much happier, much more full of life and soul.I hope one day I see you again, and I can see light in your eyes instead of void.
Thanks for erasing my paper towns, I'm still New York, but less crowded.