A week after completing my TESL course, I lined up job interviews across the Italian peninsula. The teaching market in Florence overflowed with teachers, so I decided to branch out. Southern Italy, maybe. Up north, perhaps. The world was my blank canvas and yet something still felt off.

I needed help. But help with what?

How do you describe the feeling of not wanting to feel? How do you explain not wanting to die, but not being too keen on this “life” thing either? How do you rationalize cutting yourself so that you hurt just enough to not hurt anymore? What do you do when the only help you know comes in chemical form, with a toxic byproduct of self-destruction, misery, and overdose?

How do you describe wanting to feel like anything but yourself?

After swinging by my school to grab a copy of my TESL certificate, I began my walk home. It should have been a beautiful walk. Through Piazza dellar Signoria, stopping for a caffè, then the bakery for some bread, the butcher for meat. I gave up trying to pick out cheese, so the lady at the cheese shop would just hook me up with samples as I passed through. The smells of the city, the cars, the people. It was beautiful and it was alive. The city was breathing and I was a part of it.

Yet it wasn’t enough. It never was.

I walked to the rhythm of 50 Cent’s debut album pushing its way through my headphones. As I approached my apartment, I saw what looked to be somebody waiting for a taxi. Normally this wouldn’t be something that warranted a mental bookmark, but as I got closer, I saw that this person had all of their belongings. Two suitcases and a backpack. Just standing there. Right outside of my apartment. Waiting for me. To come home.

Yalda.

“Jason,” she yelled out, “You are home. Help. Please.”

“Wai.. what?” I asked, shaking my head and squinting my eyes. “Yalda, why do you have all of your stuff?”

“I want to come to Oceanside.”

I looked at her while I tried to comprehend what in the hell was happening. She had two full suitcases, was wearing blue jeans and a button-up blouse with her hair down. She had freckles that I didn’t remember her having at the bar.

“Wha-what,” I asked, still squinting. “Yalda, why are you here? What are you talking about?”

“I want to come to Oceanside,” she said, like a child whining for an ice cream.

I was getting angry. “Yalda,” I tried to reason, looking her in the eyes which seemed somehow disconnected from reality, “I don’t live in Oceanside. What in God’s-fuck-sake are you talking about?”

“Please, I come in, we talk,” she begged.

My neighbors were gathering around, watching the commotion. I figured I would let Yalda in and try to gain a grasp of what in the hell was going through this girl’s mind. I didn’t know what else to do.

“Ok,” I agreed, “you can come in. But you can’t stay.”

I watched for her to acknowledge what I said, but instead, just as I turned my key in the lock, she pushed her way inside of the apartment, setting her bags down and walking toward the couch like she owned the place.

As she walked, she slid her shoes off, leaving them right in the middle of the room. She then unbuttoned her pants, bent over, and slid them around her ankles, kicking her jeans into an area between the living room and kitchen.

The distance she kicked the jeans, in fact, was quite impressive.

Still facing away from me, she bent over, slid her panties down her thighs, past her knees, and around her ankles, leaving them on the floor.

Finally reaching the couch, she sat down, unbuttoned her blouse and left it open, exposing bare skin, no bra.

She sat down and stared at me, head tilted down slightly, smiling. It wasn’t a sexy smile. Or a seductive smile. Or an erotic smile. It was a psychotic smile, slides from Full Metal Jacket projected across the backs of my eyelids every time I blinked. I looked on from my entryway dumbfounded, afraid, surprised, and aroused.

Yalda sat wearing a white blouse, unbuttoned and all the way open, and socks. Nothing more. She sat on the couch, hugging her right knee which was up against her chest, left foot on the floor, toes tapping to a beat that only she could hear.

My 23-year-old brain was so confused.

Here was this beautiful girl, sexy as hell, stunningly attractive, sitting naked on my couch. I couldn’t stop looking at her naked body any more than I could stop thinking that she might just be crazy enough to hurt me.

The situation scared the hell out of me. Yalda had tracked me down, found where I lived, packed up all her shit into two suitcases and made a conscious decision to move with me to a town I didn’t live in.

“Yalda,” I said, forcefully, “What the fuck are you doing? Put your clothes on. You gotta go.”

“No,” she said with a smirk that pissed me off.

We had one of those stare-downs that you see in Western movies right before a gunfight.

“Ok, seriously, like, you need to get dressed. You…”

“No,” she interrupted, cutting me off in my own apartment.

I looked at her, hard, as if trying to stare through her.

“I’ll call the police,” I threatened.

She started laughing, pushing buttons I didn’t know I had.

“What in the fuck, Yalda?” I whispered to myself as I began gathering her clothing off of the floor.

Picking up Yalda’s panties and jeans, I threw them toward her on the couch but she pushed them off immediately with her right foot. Yalda now sat naked-spread-eagle on the couch — all blouse, skin, and neatly-trimmed pubic hair — staring directly at me.

Her actions pissed me off on one level, while my getting turned on by all of this pissed me off on another, confusing me and demonstrating a level of perversion that I’ve since come to terms with.

Taking my phone out, I threatened one more time to call the police. Again, she just laughed.

“Alright, fuck it,” I said, shrugging my shoulders and shaking my head while dialing the police. I held the phone out for her to see that I was really calling 112, the Italian equivalent of 911. “You see this shit? I’m really calling.”

“Carabinieri, pronto,” said the voice on the other end.

“Ciao, uhhh, Inglese?” I asked. I spoke Italian but I did not want to fuck this up, so I figured English would be the safest option.

“Un’attimo,” said the voice, asking me to wait.

“Yalda, I ain’t fucking around,” I said, growing angrier by the moment.

She smiled and laughed once more.

“Si, pronto, hello?” said the male voice in a thick accent.

“Yes, I have a problem,” I explained. “My name is Jason and I think I need a police officer.”

“Ok, what eez problem?” asked the man.

“I have this girl in my house, you see,” I continued, “ and she won’t leave.” I paused before continuing. “And she’s naked.”

There was a long pause.

“You have naked girl in dee house,” he said, slowly, as if trying to comprehend my phone call, “and what eez problem?”

The man on the line began laughing, talking loud enough for whoever was sitting around him to hear. I could sense the group of Italian officers huddling closely and mocking my situation.

“Listen man,” I begged, “this girl is not right. I’m telling you, something is wrong and I need her out of my house.”

I could hear a discussion happening away from the phone, with talking and faint laughter.

“Ahh si, signore, uhh meezter Jay-zone, deez girl you say have no clothes?”

“That’s correct,” I told him while Yalda looked on, smiling, well-under my skin by this point.

“And she sitting in you house?” he continued.

“That’s correct.”

“And, meezter Jay-zone, in fact I have many men in police who will like very much to come to deez problem,” he said, laughter erupting in the background.

Now both Yalda and the police were laughing at me.

“Never mind,” I said, hanging up.

Yalda sat, smirking an ‘I told you so’ glance.

Right then it hit me.

“Ok, Yalda, I’m sorry,” I told her. “You’re right. I think this could work. You can come to Oceanside with me.”

Her whole demeanor changed.

“Yes?” she asked.

“Yes.”

She lit up, excited and anxious. “Yes?” she repeated, making sure.

“Yes,” I told her once more. “Put your clothes on and we’ll go to dinner and discuss your coming to Oceanside.”

She jumped up, gave me a hug, and gathered her clothes, walking to the bathroom to get dressed, demonstrating a modesty that made absolutely zero sense. While she got dressed, I picked up her suitcases and placed them outside of the door.

As she emerged from the bathroom, dressed, I stood in the doorway. In all the commotion I’d forgotten how pretty she was. As I opened the door, she continued on toward the exit. Opening the door, I placed my hand on her back and pushed her outside, closing the door and locking it with every lock I could find while remaining inside. I could feel Yalda trying to open the door from the other side while screaming something at me in Farsi.

“Yalda,” I begged from the safety of my side of the door, “go home. Just go home.”

“Jason,” she demanded, “open this door!”

“Fuck no,” I told her. “You need to leave. Go home.”

“I hate him,” she cried. “My father. I hate my father.”

Sitting on the ground with my back against the door, I could feel Yalda on the other side in the same position as me, occasionally banging the back of her head against the wood as she screamed. I heard a mixture of shrieking and crying, stirring up something inside of me that I didn’t like. This girl scared me, but I could also relate to her. In a way, I was her.

Different languages, different cultures, different religions, different upbringings on different continents. Same hurt, both wanting to be anywhere but where we were. Anyone but who we were.

The pain she felt inside was connecting with the pain inside of me, and it was fucking killing me. A dreadfully debilitating hurt connected us and it came out of nowhere into a world that neither of us particularly cared for. We were lost. Hearing her screams from the other side of the door forced me to acknowledge my own pain, and I began hating her for it.

“My father,” she continued. “I can’t go. Please. I hate him.”

I listened to Yalda cry for hours, our heads separated by a single piece of wood. Sometimes the sounds would die down, leaving me thinking that maybe she was done and had moved on, only to hear the screams begin again.

Still sitting, I slid my pants down and pulled the wallet out of my half-crumpled jeans. Finding the razorblade, I took it and cut deep, lacerating the inside of my leg until it was dripping blood onto the floor of my entryway.

“Yalda, please,” I begged. “Just stop.” Burying my head in my hands, I lifted it only to speak. “Please, Yalda, please,” I yelled, angry but pleading. “Stop.”

“Jason,” she cried, “Please open the door.”

“Yalda,” I told her, “that’s not going to happen.”

Reaching once more into my wallet I pulled out a 20 Euro note and slid it under the door. “Take this, get a taxi, and go home.”

I went to my bedroom and closed the door so I wouldn’t have to hear her yell or cry or scream, but it was of no use. In silence her screams were louder than they were with my back to the door.

I checked on Yalda hourly to see if she was still outside, afraid to leave my apartment. At one point I dropped a bottle of water ouside the window, just in case she got thirsty from crying. At one o’clock in the morning, nine hours later, she was still there. I finally closed my eyes for two hours, and when I opened them at three o’clock, she was gone. The 20 Euro note was still there but the water was gone.