THEY SAY

screens at bedtime are bad for your brain, but the sensation of holding a phone is, I find, therapeutic. I find the shape of it reassuring. Soothing. I press it to my chest like a bible. Every few minutes I lift it up and look to see what has changed in the world. I feel the weight of my thumb. My heart pounds. My veins thrum. I am in every way alive and progressing. My brain is lit up like the Earth from space at night.

I have a couple more likes for the croissant. I think it’s reasonable to conclude now that it wasn’t worth it. I squandered an entire morning on that. I can’t keep building these cathedrals out of crumbs.

I scroll.

A friend of mine, a semi-famous scriptwriter, has posted a picture of herself in a lift. She isn’t smiling. She looks like she’s in a perfume ad. Like she’s thinking: Look at me, don’t look at me, who are you, I don’t trust you … It is very effective and confusing. I comment:

Looking reflective

We’re real-life friends but she doesn’t follow me on here, which has always been a point of hurt. I know she seldom uses social media and she has a strict sense of how she is ‘seen’. But why don’t I fit in with however she is seen? Why am I not perfect follow material? Also, cuttingly, she follows some truly trashy vloggers, which is a real kick in the teeth. Now I’ve posted the comment I start to worry. It’s like I forget this stage of the process; like I set myself up for it. She might not reply. She hasn’t in the past. So why does that boil down to a failing on my part? I have to ask myself that, because it does. I didn’t use to have this – this innate distrust of myself. I feel like I have lost my pace. It’s like everything has been speeding up and up and up and I reached my own terminal velocity. I thought my twenties felt like rush hour, but no. My twenties were just pleasantly hectic. The thirties are the real rush hour.

She replies, three minutes later.

Miss you Mac

Well now follow me back and you wouldn’t have to, is what I want to say. Then you could see me regularly. It is within your grasp! But I don’t have the gall.

I don’t know when all this started feeling like …

Like …

I see a picture Mia has posted of her dog.

I decide to have a think about whether to like it. A like is never just a like.

My phone beeps. I look.

It’s a text.

From my mother.