Night

One would have thought that it was a lifeless doll if it wasn’t for her thumbs swiping across the brightly lit screen of her smartphone. Lea was scrolling through her Instagram. It was way past bedtime but her eyes were nothing less than fresh. The room was eerily dark except for the light from her phone screen. Every night was the same. The process of going to sleep was long and difficult. First the lights were turned off. Next was the mindless scrolling of Instagram and TikTok.

She was not paying attention to anything. Not the room getting colder, Not her throat going dry, not the ceiling fan starting to sound weird and definitely not the time passing by. She thought that she couldn’t fall asleep and that she didn’t know what to do. She thought that it would be a good reason to dive into social media at that hour. She thought it would tire her brain down and she would finally fall asleep. 

“Is fantasizing about someone disrespectful”

She hit the search button. Her brain was drowning. It was drowning in all her doubts and insecurities. Mostly in her assessment of her thoughts and activities.

“You know it’s alright. It’s human nature. Just stop whining like a loser and get over it,” she  heard a careless and lazy voice. Lea kept scrolling through her search results. 

“No, it’s not alright. It is disrespectful. How can you even imagine a person in that situation with you? It’s disgusting to do that and that person would not feel okay with it,” said a calmer, caring and loving voice. 

She clicked on a link and started skimming through the content. She didn’t know what she was expecting but she kept reading anyway.

“No. It is not wrong to fantasize about anything at all, so long as it does not affect how you behave in real life. … Bringing your fantasies outside of your own thoughts may cause disrespect/worry if it makes the other person uncomfortable. That does not mean having those thoughts in the first place is bad.” 

This reddit response left her hanging in the air for it confused her more. She checked a lot of other links, articles, responses and debates. But all of them came down to the same conclusion. Lea closed the tabs

“I told you so. It is very normal for a human to fantasize. Why deny yourself the pleasure? Millions of people in the world and nobody is going to know if they were in your thoughts,” said the lazy voice with some agitation.

She switched back to Instagram and continued scrolling. The cute cats made her lips curl into a very tiny smile and made her heart warm for a moment or two. The silly people doing stupid stuff made her question the IQ of the whole human race. Nothing else made sense, especially because she wasn’t really looking at or reading the posts. After a few more minutes, she grabbed her water bottle, finally making an effort towards her dry throat. She gulped the water swiftly like she was drinking water for the first time in ages. When she was done, she put her water bottle down and looked into the darkness in the room. She let out a sigh, not a huge desperate one but a small effortless one like she had given up. She turned back to her screen. She opened his profile and stalked him for a bit.

“He looks like a really nice person. I’m sure you don’t want to hurt him even by accident,” whispered the caring voice. 

“Yea.. He is better off without you. When you can’t handle yourself, how can he? And it also sounds like you might break his heart. Really? So just make do with imagination. Oh no wait, fantasizing is wrong, right?” questioned the lazy voice with absolute disregard and sarcasm.

Lea started thinking about how it would be to talk to him and be in a relationship with him. Her eyes were open staring at his pictures, right thumb scrolling, but she was with him, inside her head. She admired his smile and laughter when they talked. She felt the coziness and warmth by his tight hug. She jumped around singing, making him laugh more. She sat on his lap facing him slowly moving closer to his body. She touched his face, ran her hair through his hair and looked him in the eye. There was so much love pouring out of her eyes and passion radiating from all over her. She held his cheek, closed her eyes and leaned in… 

“No! Stop, don’t do this. You are not supposed to,” said the caring voice sternly with more concern.

Lea closed her Instagram and opened Youtube. Her home page was throwing suggestions at her. A lot of crime videos, some reddit responses, some music mix playlists and some random videos. She was in no mood to choose. So her thumb clicked on the first thumbnail that her eyes recognised. It was a music mix playlist. The first song was Freak by Sub Urban featuring REI AMI. She liked the song. She stood up and walked to her bed. She tossed the phone on the bed and turned away. She closed the curtains and hurried to the washroom. She wanted to get to the bed before the song ended and the screen turned off. She was too lazy to turn the lights on. She finished her bedtime routine, washed her hands one final time and quickly came out. There was a huge mirror right outside the washroom.

“Let me be your freakshow, I could be your favourite monster…” REI AMI sang her lines on the music video.

This line meant something to Lea. She really didn’t know why she was attached to this line and its melody, but the feelings really hit her strongly. She looked at herself in the mirror. She had put on half the weight that she worked really hard to reduce. She looked at her face. She stared hard at herself for a moment before shaking her head in dismay and turned the washroom lights off. The song was over and the phone screen was off. But her eyes were already adjusting to the darkness. She headed to the chair she was sitting in a few minutes ago. She slowly stripped down as too many layers of clothes caused too much discomfort. She did not want anything to further disturb her already difficult sleep.

She dragged her feet slowly and walked to figure out the edge of the bed. After she located the bed, she tapped her bed slowly to spot the phone. She found it. The screen lit up brightly once she turned it on. She quickly got under her quilt and turned onto her sides comfortably use her phone. She closed YouTube and opened Tiktok.

“Here we go again,” Sighed the lazy voice with a mild tone of sadness. 

“This makes you sadder. You have to stop now. Looking at all the good looking guys, girls and the cute couple is going to upset you. It will remind you of how you are not as pretty as those girls, how you don’t have any such pretty boys and girls in your life and how you have never had any such cute relationships at all. Do you want that?” the caring voice 

“Watching it will at least provide some fake satisfaction temporarily. It will at least help to reduce the overwhelming feelings,” debated the lazy voice.

“No. All these would cause expectations. Expectations cause disappointments. Disappointments supposedly break the heart,” the caring voice was strict.

Lea drowned in TikTok for what seemed like an hour. She checked out hot people, judged some cringey teenagers, stared at some cute couple expressing their love and at some siblings pranking each other and being goofy. Her legs were getting moist under the quilt due to the warmth. She pulled the quilt a little bit to let her feet pop out into the cold air. It was time to try and sleep. But something was missing. She took one last minute with TikTok and closed the app. She couldn’t stop fantasizing him and her as a cute couple like the ones she had just watched and adored.

“Stop it. Both of you are different. Infact, he is too good for you, working out to be fit and earning by himself and all. He is out of your league. Also, nothing is allowed here. Remember that,” The caring voice said with a hint of anger and control.

“Oh my God! I wish not to suffer. You know what, chuck this. Let’s watch some adult content. It will help to get tired and pass out,” The lazy voice said like something was lost forever.

“WHAT! It’s wrong, you know that. This is becoming a daily habit. It must be stopped,” yelled the caring voice. 

“Please. Let it be,” the lazy voice begged in an assertive manner.

Fifteen minutes later, Lea closed her browser app and put on her songs playlist that she made for sleeping. It had just three of Enya’s songs, Flora’s Secret, Only Time and Wild Child. The playlist was on loop and the songs were supposed to be playing all through the night till she woke up, in a mild soothing volume. Lea believed it would keep her calm during her sleep since the songs had lyrics and music that were encouraging and healing at the same time.

“This is not gonna help.” The caring voice said with an attitude and disregard.

“But there will be some peace for a few hours,” the lazy voice snapped back in pain knowing fully well that the next night would be the same but not knowing how or when this would all end.

Lea felt a deep pain as she closed her eyes. She focused on the songs like she was meditating to it and slowly drifted off deep into sleep. And everything became quieter.