Mine

It seemed like the world was underwater. I blinked my eyes twice, thrice, and the fog of sleep lifted. One quick glance at the wall clock told me that I had overslept by some thirty minutes or so. Lifting my body out of bed took little effort. After three years of the same routine, it had grown used to the abuse of rude (though self-imposed) awakenings. It used to offer some form of resistance in the beginning, when I began to subject it to these 3 A.M. wake-up calls, but it was a trooper. A regular veteran of war.

I headed to the pantry, where I found an almost empty box of 3-in-1 coffee. One packet lay waiting for me there and I took it from its misery, ripping it open where it was marked "tear here".

I have to stop anthropomorphizing inanimate objects.

I poured the contents into a mug an ex-boyfriend had given me for our first Christmas together, when he still had no idea what sort of girl I was. Generic store-bought objects are usually bought early on in relationships, when boys are still trying to gauge if you are the type of girlfriend who won't really give a fuck about what they give you, as long as they say they love you, or if you're the type of girlfriend that every boy fears: high-maintenance and will give them shit for every unoriginal act of love that they commit.

Fortunately, first Christmases are always full of forgiveness, so any miscalculation on their part will be forgiven.

I'm the third type of girl. The secretly high-maintenance one who pretends she is above all that and says material things don't really matter, when in fact, they abso-fucking-lutely do.

I turned on the tap and filled my cup with water, then shuffled over to the microwave to finish the deed.

When my coffee was finally ready, I ambled over to my study desk with the mug in hand. It is a stupid looking thing, with three pink hearts on it, proudly proclaiming the words "Best Girlfriend" in pink Comic Sans. I thought it looked hideous when he gave it to me, and I still think it looks hideous now, but the funny thing is I still use it. It is a very useful mug, and it keeps me company when I'm slouched over my books, pretending to study, when to be perfectly honest, I'm just thinking about random things that I have no time to think about when I'm in the waking world.

Reading is secondary. Mulling things over is really the whole point.

I picked up my reviewer on apoptosis and started thinking about death in earnest. I think I would be okay with it. Dying, I mean. I'm not that terrified of the whole process of shutting down and ceasing to exist, at least in the way that I'm used to. I'm more afraid of watching people go. It's the prospect of being left behind that scares me. I don't know what could be lonelier than that, to know that the people you love have gone onto places that you can't follow. At least, not for now.

I like the lull at this hour.

I know this is a false sense of solitude because all over the world, people are awake, doing random day-to-day shit, but for now, in my part of the world, at least, it is silent.

For now, at least, the time is mine.

Lost

This is how it's going to work. I'm going to see you, maybe two or three times a week, and I'm going to pretend that you don't exist. Then I'll see you on a day when I'm drunk enough on cheap wine from the convenience store two blocks away from my place and then we'll talk, and this is how it will all play out.

You: Why are you ignoring me?

Me: What are you talking about?

At this point, I'll laugh drunkenly and sling an arm around your shoulders. I'll pretend nothing is wrong and try to tease you into thinking that maybe you've been overcome by neurosis and that it's all in your head.

Things have changed, as much as I hate to admit it. It used to be that I could look at you, straight in the eye, and talk to you about anything, just about anything, and not be afraid to hold that gaze, or that you would look away first. It used to be that I could make you laugh and that you would understand every single thing about me and that we liked the same food and held each other's hands and had our own language that no one else would understand.

It used to be that you were mine, in some wonderful little way. But time has a way of changing things, turning them inside-out and making them so unrecognizable that they become completely different entities, and no matter how hard you try, you can no longer find what it was that you loved so much about them.

But then again, contrary to the natural order, there are things that stay the same, left behind forever in the aftermath of change. There are things, feelings, places...

Even people.