This Week Will Be Tomorrow Morning

There’s a text message in my inbox this morning. Surprised I didn’t hear it coming in, as I’ve barely slept the last few nights waiting to hear from him, going over all the permutations in my head.
Don’t tell me. I know it’s wrong. And worse than wrong, banal.
He’s a married man, but ours not to reason why and all that.
But when I check the phone it’s not from him, it’s just the phone company letting me know their latest deal, and my heart slips a notch. I feel like I’m not quite here. He’s ripped something out from inside me and whatever it is it’s blowing restlessly on the breeze like an old plastic bag.
I know. I’m not even making sense to myself.

The last time I saw him we agreed to cool off a bit, let the embers burn and see if the flame swelled or died down. I let him walk and didn’t go after him. I forced myself not to look back either. I headed off down the tube station entrance as if I was just another commuter making their weary way home. Being grown-up about the whole thing, I thought, would be my gift to him. Not clinging like a burr. Be mature and wait for the gift in return, no matter how much it hurt or how long it took. But this new-found maturity couldn’t fully mask the gnawing longing I was starting to feel, like someone was scraping fingernails down my bones.

Funny how a rock-solid world can turn upside down so quickly. It makes you wonder how we stay on our feet at all. Gravity is supposed to be serious, but I’m losing my foothold and getting frivolous on top of it. I laugh at sitcoms I hate and lie with my head at the foot of the bed. I don’t know what day it is anymore.

I check the phone again. Nothing. I tell myself I don’t mind. I have to put my trust in love. Oh God, listen to me! How easily we wrap ourselves in the comfort of naffness when we’re infatuated. I could scribble my thoughts on the front of a school exercise book and they wouldn’t look out of place. Doodles and daisy chains and pierced hearts. At my age.

I look at myself in the mirror and take an inventory of my addled lovelorn carelessness. I haven’t washed my hair for days and I’m eating pot noodles - when I can keep them down. Can he still want this? I have to pull myself together. I’m looking at the face in the mirror and another me is looking back. A face that wears a frown my mother would be proud of, a frown of puckered wisdom. The lips curl slightly downwards and the eyes have a glint that says snap out of it, you idiot.

A part of me knows I can’t keep waiting. Another part of me knows I’ll keep waiting. Tomorrow morning, or this week, whenever. He’ll text me. Before then I’ll have sent my friends scurrying, desperate to escape my homemade dungeon for the light of day. I’ll have ground them to dust with my woeful stories of unrequited whatnot. I know it. Love is so tedious if you fall outside the magic circle.

* * * *

Three weeks from now if you saw me and I still haven’t heard from him? That’s me in the corner. That’s me in the spotlight, hunched over a mobile. Don’t come near. I’ll be boring myself quietly to death.