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I hate him. I love him. I’m glad he’s gone. I miss him. He’s the danger I know. The rest of everything is an unknown. I just don’t know how I feel. Or what to think. But I do know that a good day starts with a good shower.

And today, there’s no acceptable limitation on the shower. There’s no acceptable volume to sing along at. I’ll use as much of all the expensive shit as I want, thank you very much, don’t mind if I do. Charcoal face scrub, let’s do it. Cleanse me! I scrub so hard I make my eyebrows a bit sore. Too much, Sawyer, too much.

Peppermint and eucalyptus, oooh yes. We treating ourselves today. Oh it’s so fresh, it’s like my skin gained access to the air. I scrub once. Rinse, scrub again. What does it matter, it literally grows on trees. I have a little ugly chuckle at my own joke. The tingling sensation feels amazing, I don’t know how it feels good, but it really does. Oh… my mind wanders, I pouffe a little enthusiastically south of the border, it tingles. Okay, it tingles a bit, no burns. It burns, rinse rinse rinse. Why does it take so long to rinse? Note to self: fucking why?

Oh shit, this is my JAM. It’s not Craig David, Alexa, what the fuck? But still

“I got a pocket, got a pocket full sunshine…. oooh… oh oh oh… take me AWAYYYYY”

My bottle of fanny hellfire is, of course, very impressed with my vocal range and commitment.

I wrap myself in not one, not two, but three fluffy towels. Tits, shoulders, hair. Oh this is the life. I stroll downstairs with a skip in my step. I tap out the stale old coffee grounds from the portafilter to the rhythm of some other crappy “I’m definitely not old” poppy playlist. Fresh scoop, little pat down and lock it in. Favourite mug, check. Caramel squirty thing, check.

Oop, another banger.

“Your lovin’ feels so goooooood, and that’s what gets me hiiiiiiiiigh” as I take the biggest smell of my coffee, just holding the mug against my towel and heading into the conservatory to sit in the beams and enjoy my peace.

I drink it a sip at a time, savouring every drop, but like all good things, it comes to an end. Toast, you know what, I fancy some buttered toast. I’m going to have some toast. Ciggy. Then toast. Twenty minutes later, I’m sat here again. The toast is gone. It was absolutely delicious. You know sometimes something so ordinary is just elite and it hits different. Soft and still with that little crispiness. Elite tier.

Now what? I puff out my cheeks and blow. I should probably pick my towels up. Eating naked seemed like such a wicked idea. Except now I’ve just got breadcrumbs in every crevice. I wonder if that’s how you get a yeast infection, I snort. That was a good one.

A wicked joke. With… absolutely nobody here to hear it.

Well, the towels still need picking up. I’ll throw them in the tumble dryer, I’m not putting the dishwasher on for… one mug, one plate, and one knife. I’ll just wash them up. Every job leads to another little job until somehow inexplicably I’m scrubbing the kitchen-diner tiled floor on my hands and knees with a sponge scourer that’s meant for washing the dishes. I stand up and exhale, and notice a subtly dirty mark on the doorframe.

So I start to clean it. I’ll wipe away his grubby hand marks, the subtle blue tainting on the paintwork. Why won’t it just shine back up? Curiosity turns to frustration. It’s fucking gloss. I wipe a little harder, inspecting more closely. Am I fucking hallucinating? Why won’t it come clean? This is pissing me off now. I scrub harder, and harder. I start to see the things I’m so accustomed to through another light. Every dent, crack, hole and chip where his hands have been heavy.

It’s everywhere. Everything he’s touched. It’s damaged, tainted, and no matter how much I try, I can’t scrub it clean. Nothing is fucking clean. My skin roasts, my eyes fill and I scrub through the blur. My whole body aches, and tenses.

Disgust, anger, and grief overwhelm me until I’m sat with my back to the kitchen cabinets crying into the bend in my elbow, sniffling like a toddler. My whole body reverberating with every sob. How is this where I ended up? How is this the grand story, “God’s Plan”? I can still feel his hands. I can hear his voice echoing through the hall.

And then, nothing. My exhausted body just powers down. I realise he’s not coming home. Not this afternoon. Not for a while.

So I cry some more. I don’t even know why, any more. I guess I grieve, I long, I rage, I wallow. I just feel, all the things. Then I remember Harry. I remember that Dan coming home is half of the problem.

The room starts to fade in and out of focus, and I realise how hard I’m breathing. Panicking, hyperventilating. Choking down vomit. What’s even going to happen to me now? Who’s going to look after me? I just want him back, I want my normal back. There’s nobody here. Nobody’s coming to save me. Nobody’s coming to soothe me. I can’t call anybody. I’m just, alone. So fucking alone. I don’t want him back, I don’t want his hands back. I can’t explain why I reach out for him of all fucking people.

But I don’t want this. I don’t want the only sound in my house to be the echo of my own suffering. I want to exist in a whole world, with other humans living how normal humans live.

I want to throw chips for the fucking seagulls.

I want this feeling to end. This too will pass. This too will pass. This. Too. Will. Pass.

Breath by breath, I bring myself back down. My soul aches. Every muscle in my body aches. The tension has dissipated from my body, but my mind can’t stop racing about it all. I’ve already had a shower. I’ve already eaten. What even is there left to do?

Get stoned, I suppose. I shrug. Why the fuck not? So I do. I slide open the patio doors, recline the sofa all the way and I indulge.

Doritos, Ben & Jerry’s, a fat old spliff. And my old pals Jay and Silent Bob, they’re striking back.

“Hey baby, ever had your asshole licked by a fat man in an overcoat?!” gets me every fucking time. I know the film word for word. It still tickles me. I read somewhere that enjoying the same shows and films you’ve seen a hundred times is something to do with comfort in certainty. Makes sense, I guess. Who am I kidding? I don’t read. I saw a TikTok.

After Jay and Silent B, it’s Mallrats, the Reboot. A huge huge over order of Chinese. Seriously I’m five-foot-three and weigh fuck all, where did I possibly think I would fit chicken chow mein, chicken fried rice, Chinese spare ribs, duck spring rolls, chicken chop suey, prawn crackers, and salt-and-pepper chips?

That is tomorrow’s asshole’s problem. And the Doritos-dust sofa is tomorrow’s vacuum problem. And the two bottles of white wine I had delivered from the shop is tomorrow’s headache’s problem.

Tonight’s problem is climbing the stairs. Which I do, successfully whilst practising stair-yoga. Because as Dominic Toretto says “it don’t matter if it’s an inch or a mile, winning is winning” and winning right now is being sprawled across the landing and being very thankful that this afternoon’s Sawyer hoovered.

Then I see the cardboard box shoved far back under one of the shoe racks. “SAWYER’S SHIT”. There’s absolutely zero sense in standing up for something I’m going to lie down for anyway, so I crawl to it and reach under. A clumsy attempt or two later I have fetched my box of shit. Deliberately discreetly stowed away and now safe to retrieve.