Waffles

 Holiday today. Most places are closed, though many operate. I wanted to go to the spa but I'm concerned my cuts will draw attention. Think I'll wait til tomorrow to buy a bathrobe so it's also more practical when I go to the pool, like I don't have to carry a towel or whatever unless it's a sunny day outside and I can rest in the solarium with my sunglasses and that pile of bones that is my body. I speak as if I'm a goddamn anorexic but I just feel so... scrawny. And I don't put on weight easily. I just wished I looked more like a woman and not like a famished doll.

My watch says I made about 10k steps, which I guess is a lot. 7.5km. I remember back when I was in college and my phone was tracking my steps, I'd often walk this much. Feel tired after, but walk that distance just by... wandering in the city. Wandering in shops, too. Checked quite a few of them, considered getting perhaps a flowery skirt or something for the Polynesian festival I'll attend at the end of the month. There is indeed a tropical black dress at H&M right now but it just feels cheap to look at and while I think such things could look killer on me (and got a few things from them, too), I feel... this is just too cheap-looking for me. I want to dress well. Not with thin fabric, not with stuff that looks generic. I like stuff that has a minimum of personality. Many pieces at H&M fall short. Still I occasionally find one I like. You just gotta keep looking and eventually there's a good one to try on.

Had to get an umbrella because it was getting unpredictably rainy. Not big of a deal. Later on, feeling hungry, I decided I'd go get something to eat at the place I first went to when I arrived here. 

I remember it. It was December 15, 2024. I had just arrived by train, about to move at my father's. I was so tired from weeks of insomnia including the initial episode that straight up traumatized me. It was night already. Night falls early at that time of the year. Cold, I don't remember it was raining. I just recall that I met my stepmom and two of my stepsisters for the first time. I didn't quite expect I would see them this early. The place was full of people, noisy, loud music, lots of conversations, and I expected to completely shut down, but I did well and even ate quite a bit of my waffle. It turned out I wasn't that unsociable. Now it's not that I'm unsociable, I perform well, but I'm selectively so and I'm not particularly interested in groups, except when... they mean something to me. Or it's a dance group.

I sat down. It took the guys about twenty minutes to deliver my order: an apple-carrot juice cocktail and a waffle with banana, caramel syrup and whipped cream. Not gonna lie, I was still a bit tense, but I was okay for the most part. The cocktail though, it wasn't great. 

And carbs... so many carbs, like when will I stop eating carbs. Sugar. I get that I'm in my luteal phase but I'm always concerned about getting addicted to sugar, if I'm not already. Or I don't know, if I eat too many carbs I'll just balloon up and become so fat nobody will love me. Strange contradiction when you read one of the first things I wrote up in that blog entry. I both feel like I'm too thin and desperately terrified of getting fat. Of losing control over my weight if I do put some kilograms on. 

I was about halfway-three quarters through my waffle when I thought, Hi'iaka, eat to your heart's content. I should eat my heart out, I should please myself.

And this is precisely when anxiety kicked in so bad I had to stop myself. It takes that: realizing I should eat more. Realizing I allow myself to eat. And this is where I'm getting worked up: allowing food in. Not merely wolfing it down to get it over with and to make sure my brain doesn't realize it's eating.

I started feeling how my stomach was getting full. The juice, which I didn't like much, was making it worse. That strong carrot was so much. I drank half of my juice before I had to put it down (45cl, I believe? Bigger than your regular glass of apple juice.). I didn't date try to sip more of it, what if I gagged or something? 

I remembered Hopoe lives not very far if the apartment I accidentally found out about is indeed the one she got. I was sitting straight up next to the window. People would come and go outside, your regular outdoor mall. 

But then, my thoughts went there.

Shit. What if she comes here? What if I bump into her? What if she sees me? Holy shit. Fuck. Please make her NOT come here today. 

I tensed up. My stomach did, too. I tried to calm myself down. Strangely enough my watch did not seem to indicate I was above a normal level of stress. Either it isn't very accurate in this regard, though it's good at tracking my sleep and heart rate (66 bpm at rest ain't that bad, if I'm being honest), or... I am incredibly sensitive to any minor stress. I had a piece of ginger candy, like I often do when I feel this sense of potential nausea that's stress-induced. I tried to sip water, but got scared that any more stimulation would flip my stomach. It didn't, obviously. Kept a straight face as I went to pay.

While exploring more, I felt that I was satisfied, though. The fullness was a bit scary, but I also felt, and still feel.. comfort. I rarely feel comfort on a full stomach. More often something akin to "okay, is this sitting right, or am I going to run to the toilet and puke it all up for whatever reason?". But I was getting tired, and not finding anything I liked. 

Went home. I feel overtaken by sadness, again. On the tramway, I couldn't help but think of myself as a useless bitch. So useless. Eats uselessly. 

It's lonely. I wish I had someone, at least, to talk to in a closer way. I'm considering telling Cepheus about my suicide attempt. I also imagined telling Cetus. Not mentioning Hopoe about this of course, but telling him that I appreciate that he told her to calm down when I came to confront her. 

And that... I've been living for months with a gaping, bleeding hole in the shape of her in the center of my chest. That I changed, yes. I did all of those wonderful things. But that under all of this, I was still longing for one voice, one accent, one massive presence: her. That the woman I fell for, and who was falling for me, she's been buried alive under thousands of layers of defenses and that I have no idea if I'll ever see her again. The real Hopoe. 

Not first sergeant Hopoe. Not obscured face Hopoe, not closed-off Hopoe. No. The real one. 

The one who gets her perfumes from one of the places I love to go to for them as well, the one for whom only five hours of sleep is enough, the one who cleans her room at 4am with the music on (even as knowing now how thin the walls are here, I sincerely fucking hope she didn't turn the volume up because I'd have been pissed to be behind said wall). The one who doesn't know what to cook for tonight but already knows what to eat next evening. The one who sometimes eat corn flakes for dinner, has this sort of Jupiterian presence, and whose eyes, if not focused or not playing this bag-of-wind role, look like those of a twelve-year-old who can't quite find her place in a group. The one with the tatau. The one who's lived through so much. The one... the one who blushed at me, her eyes black and starry, and let out a little "aha" as we were about to part, on the day we exchanged numbers. Oh, from that moment I was a dead woman walking...

I'm alive, I'm living. I'm not going to stop living, even as I feel terribly... useless. On Monday I'll go to work. I'll joke around with the open space people, I'll talk with my warrant officer, with Esme, I'll dive deep into really interesting files. I had to check a chief warrant officer's file and dude has stuff that dates all the way back to 1989. I wasn't even born in 1989. Dude is two years away from retirement. So many missions abroad, so many diplomas and qualifications earned, six kids, three wives. What a career.

But... I wish Hopoe was here. 

I wish I could hear her voice, and see her smile, not freeze up like a deer in the headlights.