Absolute Infatuation

POV: AISLA

The forum had a name I always felt a bit silly typing. Nightwatch, all caps, like it belonged to a superhero team rather than a badly-designed insomniacs’ message board with a purple header from 2011.

I’d found it the way I found most things now, by falling down a link at an hour I wasn’t supposed to be awake for, and I’d stayed for reasons I couldn’t have explained to anyone who asked, which was fine, because no one asked.

Most of the posts were nothing. Can’t sleep, anyone else up. A thread about tinnitus that had somehow run to four hundred replies.

And then, at ten past two on a Tuesday, I saw a new post pop up.

can’t stop my head tonight. feels stupid writing it here but there’s no one else awake and I don’t want to be alone with it. sorry if this isn’t what the board’s for.

It was posted by a username that was just a string of numbers and letters with no avatar. I read it twice before I let myself think about replying, because there was a version of me, not so long ago, who wouldn’t have. Who’d have scrolled past and told myself it wasn’t my business, that a stranger’s bad night wasn’t mine to fix.

I didn’t like to think too hard about that version. I’d changed these last couple of years, more than I could easily account for, and this was one of the ways it showed. I noticed things now. I stayed.

I typed, deleted, typed again.

Aisla_M: It’s exactly what the board’s for. What’s going on?

I hit send before I could overthink the wording any further, then sat with my knees pulled up, waiting.

There's a kind of quiet that only exists at that hour, when even the version of the world that lives behind my window seems to have stopped bothering to perform itself.

The reply came fast enough that it startled me.

cr41g09: honestly don’t even know how to explain it without sounding mental. my brain won’t stop going over every bad thing I’ve ever done or said, on a loop, and I know it’s my brain being a dick to me but knowing that doesn’t make it stop

Aisla_M: It never does, does it? Knowing the thing and it stopping are two completely different jobs

cr41g09: yeah. exactly that.

cr41g09: sorry, you don’t need this. you don’t even know me

Aisla_M: I don’t need to know you to sit here while you’re having a bad night. I’m happy to just sit with you through it, that’s genuinely fine

There was a longer pause after that message. I watched the little indicator that told me he was typing, then wasn’t, then was again. I found I minded more than I’d expected to, waiting to find out what someone I’d known for four minutes was going to say next.

cr41g09: can I ask something weird

Aisla_M: Go on.

cr41g09: does it get better. not tonight I mean, just, generally. because it feels like it’s been the same loop for about two years and I’m starting to think this is just what my head is now

I read that one a third time before I answered, because it mattered, and I didn’t want to give him something easy just to fill the silence.

Aisla_M: It gets different. I don’t know if better’s the right word, better makes it sound like a straight line, and it isn’t. The loop doesn’t stay exactly the same shape forever, even when it feels like it will.

cr41g09: that’s annoyingly more honest than the stuff people usually say

Aisla_M: I’m not big on saying things I don’t mean. It seemed pointless to start with a stranger at 2AM.

cr41g09: fair

cr41g09: can I ask what you’re even doing up. or is that nosy

Aisla_M: It's not nosy. I don’t really sleep on a normal schedule. I think my body gave up trying to negotiate with me about it a while back. I end up here a lot. This time of night belongs to me and people like you apparently

cr41g09: people like me being

Aisla_M: People having a rubbish 2AM and needing someone who isn’t going to say “have you tried a warm bath”.

cr41g09: god if one more person tells me to try a warm bath

I smiled at that, properly, alone in a room with no one to see it, which felt like it should have been a strange thing to do and somehow wasn’t.

We talked for another hour. He told me about the loop in more detail. An argument with his mum from months back that his brain kept re-running with new and worse dialogue, a mistake at work he was fairly sure no one else even remembered, the general sense that he was somehow always about to be caught being the wrong sort of person.

I didn’t try to talk him out of any of it. I asked questions instead, and remembered the answers as he gave them, filing each one away without meaning to, the way I seemed to do with everyone now. Small useless facts that turned out not to be useless at all, later, when it mattered that I’d kept them.

By the time the sky had gone from black to the grey that came before actual light, his replies had slowed to something calmer. More like a person talking than a person drowning.

cr41g09: I think I might actually be able to sleep now. that hasn’t happened in a while

Aisla_M: Good. I’m here if tonight decides to be a repeat, so don’t sit with it alone if you don’t have to.

cr41g09: thank you. genuinely. I know that’s a weird thing to say to someone whose actual name I don’t know

Aisla_M: Aisla

cr41g09: Craig

Aisla_M: Good night, Craig. Or morning, technically

cr41g09: night, Aisla

I stayed logged in a while after he’d gone offline, the little status light beside his username turned to a dull grey that felt, absurdly, like a small loss. I told myself that was ridiculous, that this was one conversation, one stranger, one bad night among a hundred bad nights on a board full of them, and it meant nothing beyond the fact that I’d been kind to someone who’d needed it.

I believed that right up until the next evening, when I found myself checking the board twice before eight o’clock, and a third time not long after, and felt something small and unfamiliar turn over in my chest when the little grey light beside cr41g09 finally flicked to green.

I didn’t tell my best friend, Cora, about him straight away. Not because there was anything to tell, not really, but because some things felt like they might come apart if I said them out loud too soon, the way a held breath does the moment you remember you’re holding it.

Aisla: Someone messaged me on Nightwatch last night

I typed the message eventually, three days later, when Craig had messaged me twice more and it had stopped being possible to pretend this was nothing.

Cora: On the insomnia forum? Who?

Aisla: Just a guy having a bad night. We talked for a couple hours.

Cora: And?

Aisla: And nothing, we talked. It was nice actually. He’s easy to talk to.

Cora: Easy to talk to...

Aisla: Shut up.

Cora: I’m just saying. You don’t usually mention people.

I didn’t have a reply for that one, because it was true, and I wasn’t sure yet what it meant that this time I had.