Cloudybay

The experience of insomnia.

3 am and your bf’s Instagram comments.

Am I the asshole for seeing him get a notification on Instagram from this girl who I can see, from the corner of my eye, has at some point written “I always enjoy looking at you” and then glimpsing her name just quick enough to know how to find her on social media. Ellie. Very sexy. From what I could tell owns a stripper pole and knows how to use it. What I also found is that on the 6th of December Ellie did a work out in her underwear (not a sports bra because I could see her nipples) and shared it with the world. My boyfriend being the sports or nipple, or thong fanatic that he is, apparently, thought this post was whatever a fire emoji means. Yet, there I am every night, naked or in red lacy underwear next to him and no fire emoji. And now it’s past 3am and I can’t sleep because he was hard and I was sleeping there with red panties and naked breasts pressed out against him in the most compromising poses I’ve ever done, and nothing. You know what I’m sure of? I’m sure that if he wasn’t with me and Ellie was sleeping just like me, they would have had sex within the first 3 seconds she took of her see-through top. You know what I’m sure of as well? I'm sure that if any of my friends told me one of their boyfriends had done anything like that, I’d be the first to say how little of a deal it is. I’d be like “He loves you, we all still think other people are hot.” “It’s him trying not to lose his mojo (I guess you could call it that)” or whatever else. Oh, how I dreaded this moment, I’ve become jealous. And I didn’t know it until I saw that “I always enjoy looking at you” and the fire emoji but I now seem to be on a quest to prove that something on his phone is disloyal to me. The thing is, I’m not crazy. No one types “I always enjoy looking at you” without cause. I could get a number of guys to say that to me but I would have to give them a reason to. No one puts themselves out there without nothing, not even super sexy, confident Ellie. You know what I’m saying? Oh, how I have dreaded this – I’ve started questioning his faithfulness. At this point I should probably define what faithfulness means to me. Maybe it’s not faithfulness that I’m questioning, perhaps, a different characteristic that I undoubtably thought we had that has apparently been a) lost or b)an illusion this whole time. I am not crazy, I’ve just lost my cool and chill, and whatever. Now I’m thinking “it’s me”, at some point I must have started nagging or stopped being so loving, or just become so insecure that I drove him to look for what he needed elsewhere. At the start he always said that I’m so clean, so perfect, so angel-like, so calm. No one has ever seen that in me. It’s not true but it felt good and, yes, addictive. And because it was never really true and at some point I must have shown my actual colours it’s so apparent he no longer sees that either. So then what’s left? What does he see? Very apparent that not someone he would like to fuck. I see myself, at this point in our relationship, as insecure, needy, demanding. Is it possible that I just see a mirror of what he now has come to see? I know for a fact that neither of these characteristics are defining features in me. Then how come those are the only things I see in myself at the moment. Nothing good. I used to thing I’m funny, now I think I’m rather sarcastic. Used to think I’m chill, now I think I’m cold and detached from the world. Used to think I’m beautiful, now it’s on occasion. Used to think I’m sexy, no hint of that. I really, really, really want to be a dedicated girlfriend that can be exactly what he needs, that knows what he needs. That can comfort, support, inspire and encourage. I really, really do want that. I know that’s the most unfeminist thing on the planet but I really do want that. But I’m too selfish for that. I’m always inspired to do these things only when I feel like their done to me. I bet Ellie is somehow both a feminist and the most devoted girlfriend on the planet. I bet Ellie has clicked on my account at some point (I’m tagged in some of his photos) and I bet she’s laughed or judged, or mocked. When there’s a girlfriend, you always think degrading things about the girlfriend. Why does anyone have girlfriends? Why do girls yeaaaaarn to become one?The girlfriend is the most degrading position anyone could ever take on.

Airport contemplation at 2:35 am

It’s been two months since that time I hadn’t seen you for a week. It seems that saying goodbye, adapting to life without you is always hardest. The hardest are the first 2 weeks. And then it seems easier. Life in general seems easier. I can breath. I am present when I breath. I have all these experiences. When I’m with you, I only have the experience of you. But all this is MY problem. There are plenty of people that are with someone and still do their stuff, and are awake, and well and able to not become fungus. Maybe I just am not a falling in love sort of person. In a way that some people are not weed people, some don’t like to not be in control, some hate to be lucid, some hate the opposite. Maybe I just hate that I can’t gather my thoughts. I hate this airport. The Milan Ryanair airport. The trash of airports. I am sitting on the floor, my phone is dead, there are no places to charge it, I just ate overly sweet chocolate and I’m so thirsty, and everything is closed. Nothing to do but entertain oneself. I have like 2h until I get to even start thinking about checking in. Then 2h until boarding. Then about 3h until I’m home. Not sure if he’s gonna pick me up. Not sure if I want him to. Often times I think I don’t care but then I’m so sad. I think he is a narcissist. I honestly think that one of the reasons he loves me is because I’m so compliant. I hate confrontation. Sometimes he just thinks I’m the most chill person on the planet but actually I’m fuming inside. I hate confrontation. Sometimes he see’s that I hate confrontation but only when it comes to things that have no relation to him. He doesn’t see, I guess, that if I avoid confrontation with other things, I must avoid it with him too. That maybe I’m not that chill. He doesn’t see. He sometimes judges, maybe not even judges, but points this aspect out as a great weakness. The truth is – he could only love someone with my kind of weakness. He’s a narcissist. And I avoid confrontation. And he doesn’t know it but that’s what he loves about me. One tiny thing. He loves many others. He preaches some. It’s not a bad thing. I just don’t know what I want. How can you stand up to someone if you don’t know what you want. I don’t want this lifestyle but sometimes I like it but not enough to live like this forever? “What DO you want?” I don’t know, I haven’t lived. “We can make it work my way.” I’ve never made it work anyway, I have nothing to say to that except the deep suspicion that this means that it will be swept under the rug in hopes that I will learn to love his way of life. This will be a non- issue until it will be an issue. And I know. I saw my mother blow up so many times over tiny things. Things that were systematic. And I always thought “why can’t she just put this to rest, these are such tiny things, just come to terms with it, you are ruining peace over such tiny things, you are ruining our family”. Well, now I can come to terms with things but I’m not sure I can come to terms with things for 30 years every day. I want to marry him. But I don’t miss him. A few hours until I meet him. For 3 weeks I was counting seconds to his touch. For one week I don’t care. Why do I start not caring in the last moment. Where was this when I was crying over him in the bathroom 1 week after he left Portugal because I missed him so much. I would have loved to not care. Now I have to meet him again. It will be awkward. We’ll spend one night and I’ll be back to being a legume. That I wake at 2pm because he wakes at 2pm. I wait for him to end work. I wait for him all the time. And then I leave again. And cry on floors, and have breakdowns, and punish him for the fact that I care so much that I miss him. And I don’t reply to his texts. He thinks something bad has happened. In those 5 minutes I feel triumph because at last he gets a glimpse of what I feel every second of those first weeks apart. For five minutes he worries, not knowing what’s happening, wondering if I’m alright, if he said something, if I did something. He’s angry that I’m so reckless and leave him wondering, worrying about everything. He’s a narcissist but I’m the victim. There is nothing worse than someone who needs to be the victim. There is nothing worse than someone who needs to be the victim to feel needed. There is nothing worse than someone who can’t feel needed on their own without anyone. Thinking anything. When you learn to be in a vacuum and think of yourself the same things as what you think when you’re with others, that’s when we’ll speak. Me and me. But I’m over the victim thing now. For a couple more hours. Until we spend the night again. And I spend the rest 3 weeks for him. And I go off to Portugal. I will be sitting in an airport in Dublin a little less trash than this one. On the floor with fries, hopefully. And be the biggest victim on the planet and I will like it until I realize a couple of weeks from then how much I don’t like myself. Is it bad that I have no interest in meeting his parents? I like old people. Genuinely. I don’t know why then. I guess I don’t like half old people. 55-70. With exceptions, of course. But, generally, the average Latvian 60-year-old is not my cup of tea. It’s not a nice thing to be between sleepy people in the airport that make weird noises, eat weird food, have weird smells and no one looks good at 3 in the morning. I do not exclude myself from this observation, as I mentioned before, I ate my overly sweet chocolate, I’m grumpy, I’m tired and I’m not among the top 10 best-looking people here. People in cheap airports are often very style oriented – that’s why they save on travelling. I don’t even know what my style is anymore. Because now I would never wear something that he might not like. Never say anything that might not only add to his fondness of me. Never do anything. Maybe that’s why I’m a vegetable. I do nothing. Say nothing. The exclusion being when I’m so angry I do everything. Even then very thoughtfully, so it can only be interpreted in a certain way, not to hurt my image – to openly question his. I want pizza. I have eaten once a day for the past three weeks. I don’t know how much I have lost because the apartment in Porto doesn’t have weights. I realize that eating overly sweet chocolate in the airport at 3 in the morning is the equivalent of 3 days of barely eating. I wish the chocolate was better. He’s gonna make me my favourite toast for dinner. He loves me. Whenever I’m with him I eat a lot because I know he loves me no matter what. When we’re apart I think it matters. When we’re together I feel it doesn’t. I wish I wasn’t such a passive bitch. I wish he wasn’t such a narcissist. But maybe a passive, confrontation-avoiding human can only find balance with someone who loves himself too much to ever be silent. Maybe that’s what makes us work. Maybe that’s the thing that I point out as his weakness but I wouldn’t be with someone who isn’t. There’s a pizza place across from me. I can’t wait for it to open and eat carbs that are so carby they aren’t even food. Place-holders. Aren’t we all just place-holders for someone? It’s 4:50 at home, at 1:00 he said he’s having a drink and then going home. I bet I’m closer to coming home than he is.