If ever my life can be of any use to you, come and claim it.
Anton Chekhov
It’s thirteen minutes past 7 pm. After taking the usual route to the summit of Alexandra Palace park, I could finally locate an empty bench on which to rest my bulk. My signs are vital, light perspiration staining the back of my t-shirt, but my hands – they are freezing. I wonder what other surprises life has in store for me.
Today is Sunday, 15.05.2022 and boy, oh boy, did life deliver on its promises. And then some…
Last month, I began paying for premium dating app services. Some 45 days in, I am left feeling deflated and disillusioned. The platform offers 100 different singles a day to swipe through, yet very few pique my interest. Out of those, fewer still are putting any effort into their profile’s bio. In 3 out of 4 different cases where I’ve reached out first, they have read my messages but decided to remain silent (ghosting). Only one has so far captivated both my heart and imagination. I wanted her proud eyes, laughter, and tears all to myself, like the greedy old dragon that I am. Eager to know her reactions to my “advances”, I’d paid extra, so the dating app could show me who’d read my messages and when. The best way to help people with social awkwardness, anxiety, and a crippling feeling of incompatibility is by making them pay extra for basic web chat functionality. Right? Right. But I digress. I’d written to her three times between the 8th and the 13th of May. Each attempt was more elaborate than the last one, but a checkmark wouldn’t show. In most situations such as this, I presume that a) the person never deactivated their account yet is no longer active; b) someone is impersonating them and c) they simply use different dating apps, and this particular one isn’t frequented. And so, today, I did something very uncharacteristic of me. I ran a Google search against a first name, nationality, musical instrument and city. An instant later, my first page of suggestions showed an article after article about a famous young musician who’d disappeared for days without a phone or a trace. My hands begin to shake as I click on the very first search result, and there she is – her photo at the top of the article, in all of her pale splendour. A smile that will now haunt me for many, many nights to come.
She was found, eventually, “safe and sound”. The quotations are from the news pages. I didn’t read the articles. I found her Facebook page, but there’s been no activity on it since Dec of 2021. What was/is happening was/is beyond my sympathetic comprehension. I’d been obsessing over a delicate shadow, a troubled apparition of ethereal beauty from a different dimension. In her reality, I’d survive but for the briefest of moments, before every strand of DNA in my body is mercilessly unravelled, and I collapse in a puddle of different shades of red and white. I will likely continue to obsess, but tonight, I’m at a loss. Good night.
tsvetoslav shalev 
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