An extension of me

Lately I tried to leave my phone in another room for the night, but I brought it with me in bed last night. I was reading something and I told myself that I wanted to finish it before sleep. What I didn’t tell myself was that I was also going to spend some hours after finishing the piece scrolling, that I was going to close one app only to open another and continue numbing myself. Some days I was better at being honest with myself, some others a little lie was getting me through the day. 

I’m fine, it’s fine was what I was telling anyone who was asking. Anyone who was interested in how my day was, how work was going, how dating life was treating me, how I found the housing market. What else was there to say? I wasn’t unhappy, I wasn’t happy either. Some days I was grateful, content, even excited, and some others I was tired, stressed or anxious. But most people didn’t really want to go to that level between the things you can ask, but don’t care about and the things you care about, but can’t ask. They found a sweet spot in the pleasantries, the questions everyone asks and anyone can answer. And they had more pressing things to think about. They had a family, children, a home to go back to. They had careers. They had a mortgage and daycare to think about. They had family cars and worries about their children. I had a home too, but it didn’t have my name on it. I had friends, and I had holidays. I had writing, dancing and drawing. I had my body and my mind. I had time and I had sleep. I had worries too, but they were my own, about my self.

This morning when I woke up, there was a notification from my bank. A message to tell me some money was transferred to my account. I opened it and there was another message below the amount “Dinner on me tonight”, a heart too. ‘Not to be ungrateful, but what’s the money for?’ I texted Lena. ‘To get yourself some nice dinner’ She replied. And then another message followed ‘I wanted to order you something for tonight, but I wasn’t sure what you were in the mood for’. I sat on the bedside, my legs dangling, looking at the words in our conversation, the one we started seven years ago and will always remain unfinished, ongoing, for as long as there will be words and we will be breathing. ‘But why?’ I insisted. ‘Cause you don’t feel like cooking these days. And you deserve to be taken care of’. I thanked her. I told her I already knew what I was going to get. It was two wraps, an inside joke. I was going to eat one for her too, cause she can’t have it anyway these days. We laughed.

I laughed too when I packed my carry-on bag for our yearly trip. There were clothes, shoes, creams and books for me, and there were three little bags with dozens of earrings for Lena. I’ve collected them between the time I saw her last and the time I’ll see her next. We don’t live in the same city, not even in the same country, but it doesn’t mean she’s not on my mind every time I see something she’d like. And it doesn’t mean I won’t get it for her, even if that means she’ll receive it a year later. It also doesn’t mean it won’t be almost impossible to keep it from her in the meantime. There’s a small amount of things I’m keeping from her, and that’s not so much on purpose, as it is that they are hidden so deep that plunging for them without her right next to me might drown me.

I always thought that some parts of me were only for my soulmate. And I always thought my soulmate would be my romantic partner. And maybe that’s true. But then that means I have more than one soulmate. Because no one can tell me that Lena is not my soulmate. There is nobody who can tell me that the woman who’s seen me at my best, my worst, my greatest and at my absolute lowest is not a part of my soul. The one who stood there, by my side, even when she didn’t understand where I was going, even when she didn’t agree with my ways, even when all she wanted to do was pull me, push me, shake me back to my senses; they can’t tell me she’s not embedded in me, woven deep into my being.

They can’t tell me that the woman who sends me flowers on my birthday or on a random day, the woman who knows exactly what I like and what I love, the woman who plans things for me and who listens to the uninterrupted streams of consciousness, the ones that have a starting point, but almost never an end in sight, the ones that take a turn to make a stop along the way, and get lost sometimes before reaching the destination; they can’t say she’s not a part of my mind that needs no words, a part that overlaps with everything I am. They can’t tell me she’s not an extension of me.