HOMESLICE

I did a silly thing. I went to view Lucas’ Instagram and his recent story showed he was dating intimately (a spa/massage or something) with another girl. I don’t know why I did this. I’m sad now, and I also don’t know why I’m sad. Perhaps because I used to be that girl next to him. Last week, my grandma asked again why I wasn’t speaking to him, and again I had to say, it’s not me not speaking to him, he’s not speaking to me. I have sent him a couple of messages, unanswered. He has a whole life, as do I. It’s okay to not remain in each other’s lives. I’m on the way to work, and today I think about all the little things. The way I’m feeling, the wistfulness, the nostalgia, I’m sure in the few millennia of humanity to have existed, I’m not the first person to feel it. It’s okay to feel this way, it’s natural. We all set timelines and quotas of when to look at our exes’ pages, we tell ourselves not to, we say okay let’s give it a year, and then we go ahead and do it at three months. I used to love watching Grey’s Anatomy and identifying with the songs used in the soundtrack, and adding those songs to my Spotify. If you go to Youtube, there are so many comments that say “Grey’s Anatomy brought me here” or — brought me here. It’s the collective human experience. My colleagues and friends think rather highly of me, in terms of my brain power, they think I read much more than I actually do, but I’m more emotionally intelligent than I am intellectually intelligent. When I am sad, like I am now, or when I’m angry, or when I’m tired, I vocalise it and express it, and people like it that I’m so human. It reminds them that it’s okay to be human too. I feel weird when I think about how I throw caution to the wind and let everyone know about every single turbulent thought that goes through my head, on social media, but then I stop and think, how many people have found courage to open up to me first, about family issues, about money issues, about anger management issues, because they’ve seen me with mine? How many people have I helped with mental health because they’ve seen me seek help for mine? I’m vulnerable, and that allows them to be vulnerable with me. I know so many more things about so many more people that I would never have known if not for the humanness I display. All this to say, I viewed an ex’s Instagram today, and on the whole, it didn’t make me feel pleasant, but I’m not about to beat myself up over it. I’m a human being, being human.