HOW TO KILL SOMEONE - as told by a moody teenager
how precious are the little lies we tell ourselves.
Intros and Disclaimers
There wasn’t a day I didn't wish someone in my class would have succumbed to their anger and badly hurt someone. Sounds fucked up, I know, but it would have made high school a little more memorable than what it was. Afterall, football games and prom are sooo outdated. I can’t recall the last time I attended a pep rally. You can’t recall much when you have copings like drugs.Just yesterday I popped a bar and drowned it in beer. Sadly, the most exciting thing that happened. And today,today feels like I’ve awakened into a world of npcs’. A world of nobodies. Life’s such a blur when you’re swimming in a sea filled with a whole lot of nothing. There’s school, homework, shitty classmates, shitty parents, there's your shitty household too. Then there’s some social contact that no one else seems to appreciate, lousy men, dirty boys, more school, more lousy men and dirty boys. But, if you swim long and far enough, sometimes there’s just a tiny glimpse of what this life could be. There’s really nothing else much more than that. Everything we do is so fucking pointless. I wonder how much it costs to feel alive?Writing seems so silly nowadays. What do I call this?? A rant? An essay? A book? Is this a book? Maybe a tragic epic, and then a cruel memoir. Perhaps this is just a sad long poem, but for now it’s my state of mind. Beats going to therapy, I'll tell you that. Terrible, isn't it?I figured there has to be a metaphor somewhere among all the shitty things in my life. Besides, there is something so soothing about writing it all down rather than having to put pieces back together. If I’m being honest, I’m not really good at putting pieces back together. In my defense, no one really taught me how to put myself back together either. Does anyone really know how to put themselves back together again?Whatever you do in life, do not ask me to help you solve a puzzle, because as we've learned, I’m terrible at them. A girl, once called bestfriend, gifted me a puzzle for a birthday. It was a beautiful puzzle, Frida Kahlo’s Self Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird (1940). It's contents revealed a copy, a little too dark, a little too saturated. The doings of endless replicating machines. Nonetheless, she was beautiful to me.I'm not really going anywhere with this, but I found it amusing. Not even God could replicate the imperfect human touch.After heavy persuasion from myself, I finally opened the puzzle and gave up an hour and two beers later. It sat somewhere amongst other forgotten things until I gave it to my sister to complete it. She’s really good at puzzles. I have this puzzle of my own I call “CASE 0”. The closest thing to a complete psychological diagnosis of a murderer. Haha,I’m kidding.Partially kidding.Okay, I'm kidding. Gotcha.It’s my diagnosis.Maybe writing this will help me conclude if I am dysfunctional by medical standards, or if I just had a shitty childhood. That's probably the same thing, isn’t it? Where do I start? Do I lay it all for you at once? Try and summarize everything that I have in my little black notebook? Do I rant until you get tired and leave?Should I label potentially important stuff that may stand out in case this “piece of literature” ever gets into the hands of a psychologist? God, I sure hope it does. They'd probably have answers.//I took two bars in hopes of leading productivity to me. I think she got lost along the road. Fuck me. It is so damn hot today. The air feels crisp and warm and I’m the potato chip between both things. I looked outside my window. Strange.It is hot today. Strange for a fall that knows to bloom this winter. Strange for fall to bloom at all.Sigh, if productivity had skipped its stop and taken a detour, then I should at least continue writing. Honestly, I’d take a detour too if I was the destination. That reminds me...I need to take a shower.Fuck. I can’t remember what's supposed to come next. I guess a warning or disclaimer of some sort. And so it goes, “Do let me clarify for my audience, this is not your boy meets girl romance, not your immigrant in pursuit of American Dreams, or your poor becomes rich novel. Save that for Gatsby. No, this is the tears and blood of an indigenous homosexual, so spare me your morals and righteousness.”How fucking cheesy did that sound?I know.... I hate writing. To be fair, I hate a lot of things. Doesn't every teenager?//What are morals anyway? My mom believes they begin at the division of good and wrong. What’s good and what’s wrong? If I beat up someone is that wrong? Does beating someone up because they beat me up make it any less wrong? Please mother, tell me what is good and what is wrong. I think breaking someone’s heart should be morally wrong. Punishable by death even.Killing you would be morally good.Killing you would feel so good.Killing you is morally good. I’ve smoked so many carts this past week I’ve lost count of how much money I’ve wasted. Money.
What’s beautifully adorned with sacrifice and death? It sure ain't poverty.If I had a million dollars I could buy my happiness. Believe me, it’s totally possible. I can’t stand a money-can’t-buy-you-happiness bitch. Girl... money is for purchases larger than the food that keeps you alive, purchases so huge they’ll cost you more than a single lifetime. Simply put, money keeps you alive. Poor people get it. There's no difference between being alive and being happy for us. Life's like that for the capitalist slave. So don't fucking tell me money can’t buy you happiness. If money could not buy happiness, greedy capitalist, racist, white, old men would not exist. Please excuse my sincerity, for somewhere along all the holy hateful stares and patronizing speeches, my empathy for the privileged was lost. That or it was never there to begin with. Probably, the latter. Your dear God knows I’ve lost all empathy for this flesh and bone I call my own.//It’s summertime fall, and November lets the leaves bleed once more. I need to leave this town.Each day feels hotter, and my heart beats faster. I’ve let all these men touch me for the sake of forgetting, but all I can do is remember. Money could buy your death and memory. It couldn’t possibly be so wrong to buy your murder. The rich do it all the time. They seem to get away with it.That one racist cop on TV got away with murder. Zionists are getting away with murder. Epstein got away with murder, the president gets away with it. Colonizers got away with murder, our government gets away with it, so do your nominated candidates, CEOs, celebrities. All the monarchs of the world get away with it. Your favorite top artist on your playlist probably gets away with it, the nice neighbor upstairs, Annalise Keaton, drunk drivers, fathers, mothers… You know, come to think of it...money lets anyone get away with murder. Mostly.Would I? No fucking way I could. I'm brown and queer in America.//Mother once told me I had expensive taste. If I had a million dollars, I’d bathe in riches and lavishes just like the Romans and Greeks did. Now, those riches and lavishes seem farther away, for the idea of having four walls to my name is an ambitious dream already. The good ol' Merican Dream. Maybe then, that glimpse of what this life could be would not be so much of a glimpse but an attainable reality.There would be no waiting tables or talking endlessly about the pasta that has the same fucking ingredients listed on the menu, only for you to choose the branzino with asparagus. As if you hadn't already decided to get the branzino before I came up to you. Fine, have the fucking branzino. It has gluten in it anyways. I, for one, like the pasta. Even when Chef Tony made it with watered down marinara because his pride and I’m-going-to-prove-a-point attitude did not allow him to go make a new one. I pity him. He’ll never be free, but I will. One day I’ll be so free my life won’t consist of dealing with lazy drunk chefs and pleasing incompetent “guests”. Chef Tony's not lazy he's just overworked and underpaid. We all are.// I fucking hate money.One time my stepdad asked me when I was going to finally move out and “leave us alone”. Can you believe this guy? "Leave us alone." I fucking existed before you. I didn’t know much at eight years old, but I knew money would have saved me then. I thought about selling the hand-me-down TV I had sitting in my room. Could I had pawn the necklace I found on the slide? Probably not, someone should have told that poor child he’d have a better chance at selling those friendship bracelets if he had told the world his life depended on it. Then again, probably not. His teachers would have listened better if that were the case, but adults never listen. I don’t pity him at all, not one tiny bit. I loathe him as a matter of fact. I loathe my mother, my stepdad, and every adult who killed that boy. No one wants to listen to inaudible pleads. Actually, no one listens to any pleads . Someone should have told him that. Maybe if he was braver he'd be louder. I don't know.A future ex boyfriend will once tell me, "closed mouths don't get fed."Well, who wants to be asked to not be abused? Who wants to ask to be loved is what I should have told him.//I’m crossing the street and the sound of this wretched sinful city screams in my ear. I hate this fucking place.Do you think my pleads would have been heard if my skin was less brown? Less gay? Less.. whatever this is.. or was the contract pre-signed before birth?If I had a million dollars then, I could be free from you. How cruel is the God that put us on earth together. I bet money would have saved my mother. No, I know it. “I need to feel alive,” I tell her. This life is so unfair.Interest rates and loans are unfair. Taxes are unfair. Homelessness is unfair. Whoever invented the idea of currency probably had it out for someone.They probably had it out for me too. Bluntness.
If this chapter were to be renamed, we would call it “Mothers”, however we cannot rename this chapter “Mothers” as one chapter alone is not sufficient enough to fully describe her failure as a mother...as my mother anyway. Is life always this hard or just when you're a kid?If twitter wanted to talk about range I would nominate my mother. At what point did her talents gleamed so bright, that the sun no longer shined?It’s hard to produce even the slightest drop of empathy for you when your history absorbs and consumes the air around you under this shared hell.Sure, there were circumstances you could not change, and for that I won't blame you. I get it, the world is a cruel place...still... I didn’t deserve any of it. You know, one time I ran away on a weekend morning, in snowman pjs, because my step-dad was going to hit me. Surprise, surprise, hows that for first grade christmas break? When the woman finally found me hiding from him behind a group of guys, she decided to slap me?Who the fuck does that?I would’ve wanted a white father. What's a little fetishization if it saves me from abuse. Except she married that man knowing something was admist between us, I guess that’s hispanic culture for you. Because why would we want to expose the abuse of a man? Let alone the breadwinner, gods of all gods. Fuck that. He once shoved my head down the toilet. No, fuck that. Killing you would be oh so morally good. How did this happen anyway?Theories on how my mother and my stepfather got stuck together [a work in progress]:· my mother wanted some roaring twentie's fun, then there’s a fucking baby in the womb, why does a baby solve everything?it would explain why they would have more kids.. you know to rekindle the “love”.
· she's probably like me, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.· life's hard for an immigrant brown woman, there's not much you can do when the patriarchy is after you...Still I wonder, how do you let your kid be mistreated for over a decade and continue to live under the same roof as him.. consistently feeling the need to provide for that man’s well-being. The hell with his well-being, what about my well-being?Homecoming Sucks
I once had two dogs: Leon, who wasn’t the brightest little rat on the planet, but for sure the most loving, and Guero, a fiesty gringo chihuahua.Twas' a few hours before homecoming the neighbor had knocked on my door saying that there was a possibility that my dogs had gotten run over, or that they were asleep. Why the fuck would my dogs be asleep in their blood?A possibility? Can you believe humans evolved this far yet are incapable of telling it as it is. I remember not telling anyone about the incident until my best friend had approached me about the situation. There were so many tears. I’d like to believe I was crying for and because of them, but after a couple days I began to wonder if I cried only because that’s what you’re supposed to do?It’s all so vivid yet blurry. They were right next to each other, only about a few inches away, you could feel the loose and shattered bones on each of them, the crimson stained road and the smell of feces confirming the inevitable. Their eyes bulged out, probably due to the pressure of the tires...no breath, no whining, just limpy sacs of blood and bones. We're all just sacs of blood and bones. Do you think they felt okay once their hearts stopped? Do you think they felt a lot of pain? God, I hope they didn’t, because I think I felt pain for not feeling any. I don't know. Life fucking sucks.If they were gone I couldn't tell. If they were gone I couldn't cry.Except, they were gone, and I couldn't cry.It wasn’t until my mom came home to her son holding dead dogs that the tears began to stream out. Was this pain? Was this grief? I don’t know.I started spiraling the wrong way after their deaths, or maybe I had already been spiraling down, and this loss was my excuse. Instead of getting better, I got better. I got better at understanding how insignificant life can be, how disgusting we truly are, how pathetic this whole thing is. TEQUILA
Mental breakdowns.... oh mental breakdowns. I don’t recall ever having a serious one or at least one so serious to the point of yesterday's events. I was drinking a lot of tequila and I hadn’t eaten anything in a while. I don't eat much these days, besides, drinking on an empty stomach is sorta my calling. It’s like my secret talent, I know the moment it streams down my throat and burns, the possibilities become endless. I can do anything when I'm drunk. I can be anything when I'm drunk. The goal was to dance, have fun, and possibly record a cute little music video, instead I called all my friends sobbing unable to understand what was going on and how I wanted to kill my family and then myself. You would too if you lived under this roof. So much for a little fun while my parents were away. “I don’t remember what happened”, is what I told everyone, including myself. (Of course, we all ignored it. You can’t put five mentally ill kids in a group chat and expect results.. not productive ones at least)Don’t be so silly dummy, you and I both knew I was going to remember the breakdown. Maybe inaccurate, but we would remember. At some point after losing track of the shots it felt like all my memories flooded my head. His touch, whoever "his" was, the pain, the pain you caused. I remembered my life before this, before you and him. I remembered how happy I was not knowing what Americans were. I was happy eating frijoles, wondering if I really had a mother. I remembered the lies, the false promises, I remembered it all. I remembered the fear of you leaving me alone. Alone with him. I remember lying.. lying to myself.. lying to my family.. all because you were happy. Happy to be here, be here with him. The bump on your belly, not once, but twice. I remember the dark... where my childhood years would be spent. I remember the closet. The strange liquids, the strange touches and feels. I remembered it all. Except this time, it was too much and by the time I realized where I was, the tears were already streaming down my cheeks.There was never any hope for you and I was there? Not when you knew you would stay.I guess that’s just how you kill someone.“I hated my life, i was a teenager turned adult, and the adults leeched out of me any innocence i had left when i came to america. there’s so much hate in the world and i didn’t know where to store it. so i killed her, then myself, metaphorically, in text, in any way i could to feel better”
about the text
"How to Kill Someone" takes autobiographical events and collages different timelines through a teenage persepective. It started off as venting notes, pages, words, short sentences, and then paragraphs. I had all this trauma and kept asking myself, "well what do I do with this?" The idea formed in my late highschool years when middle school depression turned into high school anger and hate. I just couldn't contain it anymore, I was a dead child roaming adulthood as a teen. This body of work suddenly sparked images and concepts revolving around coping mechanisms and trauma. My childhood was murdered before I even knew what childhood was. And so the artist became a writer, and the writer became a murderer. I still don't know what this all means, but at least I can reflect on it, even if it means nothing at all. While the work was meant to never leave my eyes, it was born to be seen. Maybe through all the bullshit I could create community and relatability. Repetition became a healing process and I couldn't help but wonder how many other people felt like this. All I can hope now is that someone reads this and feels less alone. I know if I had read this at fourteen I'd feel more hopeful. 