ninasdrafts

Original writings only. Feel free to repost, but please give me credit. I track the tag ninasdrafts. Nina J. Rab on other accounts🤍 - main blog - - instagram - - send me a message -

[literaryvein]

L. V., excerpts from the afterword

[ninasdrafts]

I love this.

[ninasdrafts]

I'm not gone. I never was. You can catch my scent on the wind that comes in with the rain. I am the cold fogging up your glass, leaving behind a thin sheet of snow on the windowpane. When returning to your hometown for the hazy days between the years feels like a warm hug, the reminders of my presence are stitches in your side. A short hitching of your breath in your throat. A heartbeat you skip when you think you hear the ghost of my laughter at that old dive bar. The red wine that tastes like my lips did. Once. In another lifetime. You can come back whenever you want. I'm not gone. I'll never leave.

- I'm not gone / n.j.

[ninasdrafts]

And when I think of you now, it no longer hurts. It stings, like a paper cut. It's uncomfortable, like staring directly into the sun. It's a nuisance. Something that's no longer familiar, no longer safe.

But it doesn't hurt. And maybe it's okay that I'll never think of you with only a soft smile ghosting over my lips, feeling nothing. Because wouldn't it be sad if we'd spent so much time walking hand in hand if you hadn't even scratched the surface of me, if you hadn't even left a fingerprint on my soul?

- n.j.

[ninasdrafts]

Oh wooow, I just fell down the biggest rabbit hole revisiting tumblr. I miss sharing my writing on here and I miss writing in general, I'm just still suuuper busy - I hope everything will calm down at the beginning of next year. Just know that I'm not gone, still checking in from time to time

[theprocast]

“I know you’re scared. Scared of getting hurt again. Because when you look at me, when you feel the pace of your pulse pick up, you see her again. It’s not like you want to go back down that dangerous road, but you can’t help the wave of old images that flood your mind. It’s like you’re back in this dark place, on that rainy day when you came home from work and walked in on her packing her bags. And I know the ghost of this feeling will never leave you. I know the memory is etched into every inch of your being. How the air left your lungs in one single rush when your eyes met her wild ones, how she threw up her hands for lack of a reasonable explanation. But no matter what you said, no matter what you did, you couldn’t get her to stay. She still walked out the door and left you alone. And ever since that day you’ve been scared. Terrified. What if the next person you let in left you like she’d done? What if you could never be enough again to make someone stay? Would it be worth it, putting everything on the line again just to be disappointed? I want to take that fear from you. I can’t promise that you will never be hurt again. That you will never be left, that your heart will never be broken, that the person you love the most will never cheat on you or lose their heart to someone else. But there is one thing I am sure of: no person that comes into your life at one point and makes it better somehow, no matter if they are around for a month, three years or twenty years, is a waste of time. There are people who will be nothing more than bits and pieces popping up in a chapter of your life - others will help you write your story. Whatever their role in your life may be, they all have one thing in common - they will teach you a lesson. This is no encouragement to throw yourself at the next stranger you meet in the streets. This is me asking you and myself to be braver. To pick up the pieces and walk on with our heads held high. To leave the fear of getting attached behind. To stop being afraid of being ourselves around others and to not let hurtful memories that belong to our pasts become limitations for our futures. I know you’re scared. But we all are. I can’t name one person that has not been hurt in their lives. That has not been bent and broken and lost their strength to carry on. But eventually we rediscover the spark that keeps us going. We move on, somehow. We always do. And I’ll be at your side whenever you’re ready.”

— whenever you’re ready to move on, I’ll keep you company / n.j.

[ninasdrafts]

“The days are slipping by, lazy and warm, and looking back, I can’t find you in them anymore. You used to be in all of them, you know. A shadow. A breeze. A dream. I swayed to the breaths you took and danced to the laughter that spilled past your lips like a gurgling stream of water, incandescent in the sunlight. I can’t hear it anymore. I can’t feel it. Summer is like this, I guess. The heat plays tricks on my senses like bottles of wine I used to empty in the shade of the trees, but you don’t even have a part in my hazy memories. In hindsight I can’t find you, even if I’m still hurt. The pain should serve as reminder, but it only adds to the distance between us. The days are slipping by, lazy and warm, and you fade a little more with every single one that passes.”

— summer daze / n.j.

[ninasdrafts]

(shortened)

[ninasdrafts]

Happy New Year🎆💞

I have a pen name now!

It's been quiet on here for the past months, but I want to thank you for your continuing support. The coming months will be just as busy for me - we're still renovating. Besides the time-consuming plans regarding our future home, I've been focused on finishing my book. I will start querying This Darkness is a Part of Me at some point later this year. My plans for this account aren't finalised, but I've grown and changed as a writer, so I've realised it's also time for a change on here.

Let me re-introduce myself: I'm Nina J. Rab, 29 years old and I'm an author from Germany.

Note: I'm keeping the user ninasdrafts on tumblr for now, because my journey started here🤍 I'm now Nina J. Rab (ninajrab) on all other socials.

[ninasdrafts]

Hey there, I'm not really writing to post at the moment because I'm so busy. But I'm still working on my book, and if you'd like updates on that, you should follow me on twitter - it's ninasdrafts.

[ninasdrafts]

Still looking for comp titles for my fantasy book.

Strong themes: family betrayal/fighting inner demons and tragic past

Plot points: competition for the crown/seeking revenge for murder ("eye for an eye")/falling in love with the person supposed to kill you

If anything comes to mind, comment or shoot me a message 🤗

Edit: thank you guys for reaching out, but I'm not looking for a title for my book - I'm looking for comp titles

[ninasdrafts]

Who would've thought it'd be holding your hand where I'd lose my footing? After all we'd been moving in tandem half our lives. The question plaguing me is not the why or the how, it's the when. When did we lose sight of each other? When did the ache of missing you turn into relief inspired by your absence? Perhaps when you started seeing my wins as your losses. Perhaps when you wanted to be heard to be so bad, you forgot to listen. Our story has two sides, I know. I turned into a ghost for you. An empty casket haunted by memories that'd lost their shine long ago. I no longer wanted to talk about the sunlit past, glorified treasures of time that felt bigger for you each day because nothing came after. I no longer wanted to pretend we had a future together going forward. We didn't. We don't. I knew, you knew, but we didn't voice it. We couldn't. Things like this happened to other people, not to us. Ugly truths are hard to admit, but how ugly are they really when they feel like the first breath of fresh air in a year? I'll say it: I miss the times we lived through together, but I don't miss who I was with you. I'm doing better now. I'm doing better than I ever was and that's what you can't stand. And this is why we can never go back to what we once were.

-the ugly truth / n.j.

[ninasdrafts]

We've all got a story to tell, don't we?

[ninasdrafts]

Somehow we became everything we swore we wouldn't. We slipped into our routines, into our habits, alone, stumbling into the life we'd always wanted for ourselves, but it didn't fall into place like we imagined it would. Over the months, we got separated and drifted further apart, two pieces of a whole that became so unrecognisable that if we met again now our edges would no longer fit, roughened by time, disappointment and not wanting to be the one to take the first step. I told you I missed you, you said you wanted things to be the way they were - but there was no acting on these words. No payoff. No route leading back to what we'd been. We'd grown apart, like two flowers who'd gravitated toward two different suns and my heart couldn't take it - until it eventually could. Until I'd moved on and stopped wondering what you were doing and why you were doing it without me. I unlearned knowing you and even though it feels right now, I remember how wrong it used to feel. Letting you go was like erasing a part of me, but the skin around the hole you left has long since knitted itself back together. And I wonder how you used to fit there. I wonder how you used to be the centrepiece of my life and now you're not even on the board.

I unlearned knowing you / n.j.

[ninasdrafts]

It's been a long time coming💫🫶🏼

Literally - long time no see.

As you may or may not know, we're busy building our future home so the past months have been the most stressful months of my life and time to write (and to update my socials! Obviously) has been cut short. I will be back, though, fear not😌

I got to see Taylor Swift twice in the past weeks (for the first time!!) and I cannot begin to describe what this experience meant to me. I feel like this woman held my hand during a huge part of my life, guided me through falling in love, my first heartbreak, grief, wonder and all the emotions belonging to growing up. In terms of writing and being true to what I'm feeling, she is one of my biggest inspirations and influences and finally seeing her perform was an absolute dream come true and exceeded my already great expectations. I also got to hear two of my favourite songs as surprise songs - this is me trying and Call It What You Want - and somehow managed to get two guitar picks (thanks to Paul I guess???). I'm grateful, happy and very exhausted!

So how do I go back to normal?

[ninasdrafts]

After all these years, these thoughts are still what keeps you awake at night, even though you'd sworn to yourself you wouldn't go back there. I think it's because we faded over time. Quietly. Naturally. I didn't disappear from your life - the parts I gave to you just became smaller and smaller and one day you no longer recognised them as mine. Sometimes I find myself thinking it would've hurt less if there'd been a big fallout. If there'd been hurtful words and betrayals and ugly truths. My loud laughter faded to whispers. Whispers faded to silence. I belonged to you and then I didn't. And even though you don't want to, you find yourself lying awake in the middle of the night, your finger tracing the spot where I used to stretch out my hand, waiting for our palms to meet.

fading / n.j.

[ninasdrafts]

The years are slipping by and we're falling back into old patterns, reducing ourselves to our bad habits, crashing into each other like waves that've been doing this for decades, for eons, forever. And I think: is that all there is? A love that lasts but crushes me from the inside out, where every day hurts a little more, sharpening the thorns growing around the bones of my ribcage. How do I break free, I wonder, but I come up empty. Because when I dig deeper and my fingers scrape against soil, there's only sand and dirt caked underneath my nails, never anything of substance. Never anything that tells me how to cut myself loose from the ties you braided into my hair, my tendons, my soul. How does it stop, I wonder, and the answer is one I've always known but never dared to speak. I burn the photos. Destroy the files. Bury the memories. And years later, my heart still remembers the shape of yours and there is nothing I can do except for hoping that one morning I'll wake up and won't be able to recall why it took me so long to fall asleep.

is that all there is? / n.j.

[ninasdrafts]

When I ask the universe to send me little signs of you, I don’t have to keep my eyes and ears open. They're not hidden. You're everywhere. I notice you in the smell of freshly made coffee, or a whiff of perfume I pick up in the streets. I notice you in a word I read on an advertising space or in a song playing on the radio or in a conversation I pick up on a barely occupied train. I notice you in an echo of laughter ringing through a room that otherwise would've been empty. You're in a ray of sunlight warming my cheek and in the first drop of rain hitting the pavement on a hot day. I don’t even have to focus to notice you in everything all around me. I don't have to listen. I don't have to look out for you. That's the magic, I guess: knowing you're not gone, not really. Believing it with every fibre of my being. And on days where I forget, I can return to the places where I know I'll find you and I will never be disappointed.

you're everywhere / n.j.