It was summer, the kind of summer that makes you lazy, that screams in your bones to give up on the world. I lay on my bed, pushing myself to wake up as the clock showed 11 a.m. My eyes are open but my body is taking up too much stamina to move. It is as if each of my cells collectively prefer to stay where they are, and refusing my order to leave their comfort zone. With great effort I put all my weight on my left shoulder, hoping to relieve some of the stiffness my body feels. I pick up my phone from the nightstand. The notifications have piled up on my screen, of strangers I don’t know much about. I looked for a familiar face but I couldn’t find any. No important messages to answer. I put the phone back, leaving it on silent mode. The only calls I get are from people I prefer to text with. I put on some music, soft and gloomy, a kind that vibes and speaks to your soul about everything you feel but cannot say out loud. The lyrics are everything I want and feel. I want to sing and scream them out loud but my mouth can’t form words as if it has a will of her own. I sit back on my king-sized bed, the silk covers of my pillows soothing my back and the lavish fabric of my bedsheet caressing my body. My room feels cold. I think of increasing the AC temperature, but then I don’t. My toes are cold but it hardly matters. I know the sun is blazing outside and when I go out, I will miss the comfort of my room. My phone buzzes and I am reminded of the date I have. I know the guy from a dating app, that makes us pretty much strangers. I think about the date for a while, whether I really want to have it or not. I decided to have fun, which I barely have nowadays. Most of my days go nerding around literature books and essays. I want to have a good time, the kind of time where I spend my time doing things and experiencing things out of the ordinary; where there is no commitment for tomorrow because I suck at relationships, but have an intimacy because deep down I desire one. The more I think about it, the more open my world becomes. Life should be exciting, not dull and boring. Life should be full of adventures. It should not be constricted to one space and movement, like a dancing doll that repeats certain fixed moves all throughout her life span. You have to break the momentum at some point in your life, and breaking that momentum to desire comfort doesn’t seem wrong to me.

I hop into the shower and turn it on, the hot water hits my skin giving me goosebumps. Somehow the burning hot water felt cold against my skin. After some time my body adjusted to the water temperature, and a sense of relief flooded over me. My muscles slowly started relaxing and I wish I had a bathtub to lie down for a while. A thought strikes my head and slowly the guilt starts seeping in, first into my skin and then into my bones. My friends don’t approve of me going on meaningless dates. But I beg to differ. What seems to be meaningless is meaningful to me. Meeting and talking to new people gives you perspective, even if it’s for a brief moment. They say reading a book is like reading a man. But I believe in reading a man. Because a man can write several books through his experiences and what’s more fun than to consume their perspective in its raw form. Nothing goes to waste, each and every encounter we have shapes our form, nature, morals, and values. Even the people who we haven’t met can create a big impact on us like a South-Korean boy band does in my case. Meeting new people made me realize how cruel people can be, how amazing people exist, how one person’s lifestyle differs from others and why, how messed up is the social structure of society, how classism is so common, how crazy are the expectations with men and women, and how lucky people get to take advantage of that. Capitalism is at its peak and we are slaves to it. Some break the chain and live a comfortable lifestyle. I want to be that person by any means possible. The only way I got to realize that was going on those dates. Some were amazing, and some were disappointing. Passion has lost its meaning and indifference is the new trend among all kinds of relationships. People are scared of intimacy and commitments because they are afraid to get hurt. So, they search for a fleeting moment of happiness, like me. I think about why I am going on dates in the first place. Maybe because I don’t have a sense of security in my friendships. They lack emotional availability, from my side because I do not know how that works, and from their side, because though they love me, they do not understand me. The only people who are emotionally available for me are who I don’t know much about and people I ought not to.

I bounce out of the shower in a trance and the warmth of the hot water is quickly replaced by the cold air. It sends an electric impulse down my spine, chilling me to my core. I wear my bathrobe and start blow-drying my hair. I think hard about it again. What kinds of friends do I have? Disagreeing about me going on casual dates only means we have different thought processes. It is supposed to be an individual decision. I put my hair serum on and realized, I lack emotional security in my current relationships, so I am searching for it elsewhere. I realized that I crave intimacy and despise it all together, at once. Like a single hair-splitting into two ends, I crave it in the same form I despise it. Love. I crave it from human beings other than my family, and I despise it when it lacks emotional availability to the extent that I have to bend my self-respect to save my relationships. Every human makes mistakes. Every human hurt other humans when they love each other, especially women. The more intimate the relationship, the more hurt they get from another person. I start putting my makeup on. Even though every human makes mistakes sometimes or the other, I have rarely got a sorry or two from my friends. And like a masked idiot, I apologize on their behalf, because sometimes some people are more important than the mistakes they commit, a theory they might not believe in. Now, it's time to get dressed, like I always do by fitting into happy clothes and pretending I am fine when I am actually not. I rarely undress, in fear that my vulnerability will not be welcomed, and it often is not.

I put on a black tube top along with a white shrug and denim bell bottom pants along with black heeled boots and kept my hair open. It is 2 p.m now. I booked a cab and headed over to the hotel. It is an hour's drive from my place. The sun is warm, and the car is giving me nausea. I opened the windows and lit a cigarette, hoping the thoughts from my room would, at last, leave me alone, but it didn't happen. They keep circling around my head, like an endless marathon race. ‘Get your shit together’ kept ringing in my head like tinnitus. A remark I want to forget. It’s not necessary that a person should have their shit together. People can be full of flaws and chaos and still look beautiful. No one is perfect. Even pure souls don’t have their shit together and it’s alright as long as you are not harming anyone. In case, someone is getting hurt by your actions, there are a lot of ways to talk about it rather than getting hyper over it. I wish people understand it. I wish people understand how frustrating and suffocating it gets, to apologize for someone else’s misconduct to keep the relationship going just because you love them; because you don’t want to give up on them, and hope someday or other they will understand where you come from. And that’s how relationships work. You just don’t give up on your favorite person just because you two are not on the same page. You try to get along with them. You forgive them sometimes even when they don’t apologize, because you can see through them. You know they feel it but are afraid to admit it because of where they come from. You give your best without expecting anything. But at some point, it gets too much to bear with, and it is so because of the lack of communication. The traffic got bad and I started getting motion sickness. I lit another cigarette and debated in my head whether I should confront my friends about it or not. I decided not to. I would rather keep it inside me rather than cause them any more trouble and create misunderstandings between us. They might think I am complaining, but these are just the unsaid troubles I have been hiding deep inside me for a really long time.

I saw a flower shop and requested the cab driver to make a stop. I picked up a bouquet of roses for my date. Everybody loves flowers unless you are allergic to them. I hope he certainly is not. I like gifting flowers to people and more than that, I love receiving them. Flowers certainly are the way to my heart but unfortunately, I don’t get to receive them from any one of my romantic partners. So, I take it in my hand to never let my partner feel that way. What’s the best way of showing affection other than giving flowers? Different kinds of flowers have different meanings attached to them, seeming it fit giving to anyone whether it’s your partner, family, friends, or even strangers. I get back to my cab and head to the hotel.

It's been 30 minutes and I am greeting him with the flowers. He smiles.

‘Thank you.’, he murmurs and kisses me on the cheeks. I lean in my face to hide my blush.

We exchanged greetings and he made sure I was comfortable with him. We played some music and after a while, I took a shower to get rid of all the sweat. I kept the water just warm this time. The shower was comforting and had a calming effect on me. I vibed with the music and danced along to the beats. After changing into the set of comfortable clothes I brought along, I hopped out of the bathroom. He offered me a whisky and how could I deny it, whisky was my drink. He poured me a glass of whisky diluted with water, along with ice. I made sure it was 3 cubes per drink. We lay in each other’s embrace and talked about what we did since the last time we met. The background music was so hypnotic I almost lost myself in our conversation until the room service came along with our order. It was 06 p.m. already and we were hungry. He opened the door and the room service served us our dish. The pizza and the white sauce pasta looked delicious. He served me my plate and then served himself one. He made me realize for the first time how a simple act of service can make someone feel special. He put on Netflix and we browsed through the shows. 

He suggested ‘You’ and I went along with it. I later found out it was a really good show. I couldn’t move my eyes off the screen except for dumping my cigarette in the ashtray. We were taking in between and laughing our hearts out. At last, when a really romantic scene came and we kissed, it was so good that the rest of the night blurred past me.

This morning, I woke up feeling refreshed, with no unnecessary thoughts bothering me anymore.

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