Late night thoughts

Cannot sleep. Rome is too hot, my flat is like an oven, and my mind won't shut up.

I have been thinking about New York again. About the year I spent there. About how beautiful everything seemed when I was young and stupid and thought the world was going to bend to my will just because I wanted it badly enough.

The thing about cities is that they change you without you realizing it. You think you're the one observing them, but really they're observing you, cataloging your weakness, your longing, your desperate attempts to become someone other than who you actually are.

I called Mario today. He's distracted. Something is happening with him that he's not talking about. I know him well enough to recognize when he's lying. He says Sonya is fine, but his voice changes when he says her name. It becomes careful. Measured. Like he's reading from a script instead of speaking from somewhere true.

I don't know why I care. We've been friends since university—almost ten years now—and in all that time I have watched him move through women like he's collecting something. A conquest. A proof of something he needs to prove to himself. I have never understood it. I have never wanted it.

But I understand power. And I understand how to use it.

Sometimes I think there's something wrong with me. Not in the way people usually mean it. But in the way that I can be in a room full of beautiful women and feel nothing. And then one person—one specific person—walks in and the whole world stops.

That's not normal, I think. That's something else.

That's obsession. That's the kind of thing that can destroy someone if you're patient enough. If you're smart enough.

Anyway. It's late. I should try to sleep. Tomorrow I'll start planning.