A Handsome Blob of Nothing

Then I met a handsome blob of nothing.

It was around three weeks after he left. I’d spent most of my days on the sofa, watching, then rewatching a video on TikTok of a blooper reel, big laughing mouths, suddenly unfamiliar, but comforting. Imagine laughing, I’d think.

My girls had already visited, feeding me Pizza Express dough balls and olives. ‘Bite-size', they said. I was like a little broken bird, tipping my mouth up to them as they ensured I ate a little before they left. They stroked my hair. My mum had already called five times a day. ‘I’m alive,’ I would say. ‘It’s all my fault.’ She would send me pictures of myself years ago to remind me of the girl I was, and that it wouldn’t be long until I felt like her again.

I had received all the emergency after-care, and when the door closed behind my friends, or I pressed ‘end call’, I realised I was faced with the brutal reality, that I was alone, and I would never sit on my sofa with my partner, sharing pasta, and conversing on a soul-level so obscure and nourished throughout the years it may as well have been different language, ever again.

Wine. Comatose. Morning. A handful of crisps. Is it time to brush my teeth? Ugh. Work. Studying. Can’t hold my pen right. Wobbling. Wine. Comatose. Crisps.

Then one night, while lying in bed, forcing myself to picture a version of myself that may be happy, a handsome blob of nothing slid up from the floor, over my sheets, and settled himself comfortably on my chest.

Oh yes, the darkness. I remember. Hello.

He said nothing, but weighed me down, chest into mattress, mattress into earth, the magma, the ashy nothing. He moved his slimy hands over my eyes and pulled them shut, until everything was a delicious, velvet black.

I spent months with him, curled in bed, comforted by his weight. Comforted in the knowledge that opening my eyes would be very, very bad. ‘Shhh.’ He whispered. ‘Not yet. Eating is so tiring. All the way to the kitchen? How exhausting, no, shhh, close your eyes, ignore that call, don’t go to class today, everyone is so shiny, it’s alarming, it’s fake, stay here, shhh.’

I had a replacement. Just what I wanted. Something to come home to. After every gruelling event, after every prolonged ‘sesh’, I would come home, lie on my sofa, and feel his huge, handsome arms around me, pulling me deeper, until it was all black and I could sleep. And I would sleep, sometimes 24 hours at a time, deliciously, with him, stroking my face.

‘I hate you in that dress’ he said one day, before I was due to meet some friends in a pub. ‘I hate it’ he said, lying flat out on my carpet, this huge slippery oil black blob, a pair of eyes just visible beneath a swollen lump.

‘Yeah, awful,’ I agreed, ‘I’m not a dress girl, I’m more of a dirty pyjama girl, aren’t I? In fact, I’m not an outdoor kind of girl, am I? I just like to be inside, and honestly, I’m not a really good friend either, I should just stay well away.’

‘See? You’re learning.’ He said, nudging closer to my feet.

I reached down and stroked the slippery mass, then lay on the floor, and a day passed, or two days, even three. I’m not sure.

In the midst of my love affair with the Handsome Blob of Nothing, I had a friend stay with me, and I had gotten so used to my companion, that when she showed concern at the state of my home, my lack of hygiene, the clothes sprawled on my floor, I said … what? It’s no big deal…I pulled her, my Handsome Blob, and myself out for drinks, and when she went to bed, I continued drinking with my blob, who in the early hours, showed me tricks, new ways to sink, ‘Bravo!’ I would say, I’m so so comfy with you. Let’s drink to that!

‘So, I’ve called your mum, and I’m taking you home.’ My friend said to me the next morning, whilst hanging my clothes back up in my wardrobe, and unpacking the food shop she had done for me in preparation for my train, which she had scheduled for a few hours later. It is only when she had undone the mess that the handsome blob had made, and my house was a fresh haven, and her arms were open, that I admitted that I was scared. Very, very scared.

The month that followed was a blur, but I was home. And in place of the blob, was a cat called Billie, waking me by clambering up onto my chest, and pushing her whiskers into my cheek. In place of a handful of crisps was a coffee my mum made, alongside a perky little med. Instead of ignoring my messages, I spoke to my girls every day, who reminded me of the kind of person I was before I met the Handsome Blob of Nothing. My girls. My girls.

My mum bought me a colouring book, and in a daze, I would fill geometric shapes with lines and lines of blues, purples, greens, bright fuchsia pinks, sweet-looking oranges, and yellows. Over the weeks, my life became flushed with colour, and I couldn’t imagine wanting to live in the darkness anymore. I started to come to life, and for the first time in months, wanted to wake up early and watch the sun rise over the sea, and watch some tv, and have a bath, and eat some delicious food. Just like the video I had watched months before, wondering when? When? I laughed, I laughed with my mum, over nothing in particular, just because something was funny, and I felt it in my stomach like a shard of light.

Then, you’ll never guess what I did… like any partially healed person, I thought, Maybe it’s time to see what’s out there. Maybe I’ll put on a dress…

I downloaded Hinge.

TBC…