To myself,
I do not give you permission to message him.
No matter how twinkly Thursday night’s sky is or how uplifting Friday’s morning is, you’re not to reach out. You’re not to slide into his DMs with a flirty quip about how your peach is the same size and does he still live in Notting Hill or has he gone home home.
Are his family fine? You don’t care. Is he working? You don’t care. Has he cut his hair recently? YOU DON’T CARE. (Except if he has cut his hair, that makes him a tenth less attractive so let’s just imagine he has cut his hair and it went horribly wrong and he now looks like Phil Mitchell.)
When loneliness curses your name, yanks your hair, spits in your face, you still don’t have permission to reach for your phone. Oh but we had something special – oh but you didn’t. You had rough and tumble, frothy, hazy delights last summer where you travelled two hours to see him.
The current situation – you know, the one where you’re sat at home, wondering about boyfriends and getaways and how much you’d need to earn to afford one of those studio flats with the spiral staircase leading up to the bed – does not permit you to punch yourself in the face romantically. It doesn’t mean you need to start treading water after starting to swim again. It doesn’t mean you need to mow the lawn of introspection, not when things are just starting to grow.
Starve yourself of flirtation, make do without a flurry of grade A bullshit “if this is still a thing in March we should go on a bike ride in the countryside” messages and learn to live and love yourself and not the dreamboat, duvet-lipped figure of irrelevance.
Talking to my pillow. 