After the bath I lie on my bed all twisted up in a towel, not moving, not even to grab my phone, and it’s not even like I’m thinking about not picking up my phone; my mind has just drifted off somewhere else where phones don’t ask to be looked at. Time passes. I’m not sure how much of it and I don’t know why, but there’s this flicker of realisation where I come back down into myself and snap upright and as I do I see myself in the mirror that sits over the fireplace, all strawberry pink and puffy, and I smile at my reflection as if saying hello. I never confront myself like this. Sometimes it happens when I’m drunk and I’m in the toilet, talking myself through the motions to try to stop myself from doing something stupid, like, Yeah, use that toilet roll. I get it’s a bit gross that it’s damp at one end but it’s probably better than getting wee in your knickers, and when you get back out there try to drink some more water and be nice to Hannah cause you were a bit short with her last time she made a joke. And it’s through this inner dialogue that you become conscious of yourself as someone you can talk to and have a relationship with. I look at her now in that mirror and she’s me and I am her, and although we’re the same thing I see that we can talk to each other even if I will always know what’s coming because she, her, me, is the only thing I can count on to be there for the whole of my life. And in the towel now, with coldness starting to prick up all the hairs on my arms, and the sheets dark with damp, I experience another ‘over’, and this time it’s a promise, to keep on being nice to her. To order expensive takeaways, and go on walks, and watch films that are difficult to understand, because this life could be gorgeous if only I gave myself permission to allow it.