Midnight Philosophy ✓

01:52 AM

"Two sugars is fine."

"I'm not finished."

"That's enough."

"I'm sorry."

"Fuck you."

"I love you."

"I hate you."

"Time is the best healer."

"I've got a traineeship at a major publishing company." 

"i feel nothing for him, I've felt nothing for so long. I want you."

"I'm fine."

"I booked the restaurant ten minutes ago."

"I think you're beautiful and brilliant."

"- wait, you lied about that? That's pretty dark, Sol."

"I know it's dark but what's life without a little darkness."

"You seriously looked a person straight in the face and said that? That's one of your lies?"

"What about you? You feel nothing for who?" 

"I - I feel nothing for a lot of things."

"You feel everything for everything."

"Who did you lie to and say they were beautiful?"

"....a friend. I don't know, I was high on acid or MD or fuck knows what Olivia dropped in my drink but I knew it would make her feel better so I said it - and it did. I think I meant it....but who the fuck knows. Even I don't know what's going on in my head sometimes. So, why did you lie and say you booked the restaurant ten minutes ago?"

"Dinner with my dad. I hadn't seen him since - since what? I was five? I'd cried to my mum about it on a rather lonesome sixteenth birthday and a few weeks later Mum comes home from work and tells me my dad wants to see me on the weekend. She tells me to pick any restaurant and time I want and we'll go. She gives me his phone number and tells me to text him the restaurant and time. There's forty thousand thoughts in my head for the next two days 'cause I haven't seen him so long and I'm afraid of so many things. Will he like me? Will he hate? How do I tell him I like boys? How will I even know it's him when I haven't seen him for years? I mean, his face was a blur, all I remember is a fat afro and bulky glasses but you won't believe the amount of guys in South London with that haircut. 

So, on the morning I'm meant to see him, Mum asks if I've booked the restaurant. In my panic and thoughts I forgot. I completely forgot and I was too scared to answer his phone calls and texts.  I tell her I have but she sees right through the lie and says my dad texted her saying I hadn't responded to any of his messages. She's come from a thirteen hour shift at the nursing home so she starts shouting about how ungrateful I am and how much hurt and history she had to swallow to even contact my dad in the first place to ask him to come see me. She says she shouldn't have bothered, that I've made her look like a prick and since I won't bother to respond to my own father, she'll tell him I'm not interested. And she does exactly that. I don't hear from him again. I...I've been texting the same number for years and nothing. I don't know what she said but he's completely cut me off and...I've never known heartbreak like that. It's...It's grounding, in the worst way, like slipping off a rock and onto hard cement."

"....."

"....."

"I lied. I do know why I told her she was beautiful and brilliant. To stop her telling me about how her empty she felt and how grey the world had become and how her parents drank too much. I didn't want to hear about it anymore. I wanted a break from her bleak life and I had no emotion left to spend so I told her she was beautiful to shut her up."

"Jesus Christ, Sol. When did life get so hard?"

"It's always been hard, Micah. We were just too young to see it."