Granola Girl VS Me

Two years had gone by since we went our separate ways and I had not seen him ever since. I was never considered a well-balanced person but I still had my dignity and I had rules to help me keep it. Rule number one: Don't beg for his love, which means don’t send him messages; Rule number two: Don’t go anywhere near his house with the hope of “ casually” running into him. Rule number three: Do note re-read old messages of any kind; Rule number four: Do not listen to any song you used to while with him. This last one did more for my mental health than for my dignity. Despite my efforts, I still had unresolved feelings and I knew It was pathetic for I was almost thirty.

At that time, I had a meaningless job in which, for my doom, I got to spend a lot of time staring at a screen. The first two months after he called it off (he was the one who did it, because of our “incompatibility”), I was the most unproductive being but I became more functional with time. The slight progress was only possible because we had no friends in common, so there was no one who could tell me the tiniest bit of information about him. He was not much of a social media user, he was almost forty and thought it was all rubbish and a waste of time. And he wasn't wrong. He hardly posted anything, still, I opened his Facebook profile every day, just in case he did. I remember sitting at a cafe one day and overhearing some teenage girls’ conversation: “Are you in love with him? Tell me! Do you post your Instagram stories for him to see? I bet you do”. I smiled at the candor of it all. “Kids” - I thought. I remembered my teenage years, using Hotmail Messenger to send this type of encoded message. I would always put some sentimental song lyrics on my profile, hoping the message would get where it needed to be. But that was ten years earlier.

One day I was at the office scrolling through Facebook and saw that he had changed his profile picture. I was so excited to see him, even though it was just a photo. He was almost the same, maybe with little hair loss, but still the same. He hadn't changed his profile picture in two years and I wouldn't think much of it if it wasn't for the fact that he chose the day after I changed mine. I knew this was not a coincidence. It was him saying “notice me! I am here too”. I had made the first move of an online dance where we mimic each other to show that we were still dancing. I started posting more songs on Facebook and putting more lyrics on quotation marks, after all, this was still my favorite way of communicating. But my biggest concern at that moment: pictures! Lots of them, in different places, with different people, interesting people. I wanted him to know that I was happy, happier than ever, happier than him, #livingmybestlife, #blessed.

I was not expecting him to react to any of my posts, he was a proud man. But I was almost certain he still had feelings for me. At some point, he would give in and come talk to me. But he didn’t. Every time he would come online my heart would start racing as if he was walking towards me about to talk, after all this time. And the whole time he was online, I was online too. I didn’t want to lose any chance of him talking to me. And day by day that green circle on the screen in front of his name became my obsession, my hope. That’s all it was, green light in a shape of a circle. The absurdity of it all! It was as if he wasn't alive when the light wasn't there. And when the dot would appear, suddenly, I too, was alive! And anxious. I felt like a guard of some sacred object and it felt like a rewarding task, I was sure he must have stared at the green light in front of my name too. I would keep his and he would keep mine. I wasn't going crazy. If he had always hated social media, why would he, all of a sudden, be online all the time. Sometimes I would go offline and reappear ten minutes later just to find out he was gone too. He was waiting for me to talk. But I wouldn’t, I still felt humiliated.

I started to feel cheerful by the day and one night, about to break my “no reading old messages” rule, I scrolled down to our WhatsApp conversation. I noticed a new profile picture. I opened it and stared at it for a minute. Where was he? I knew that place. He sat outside what looked like a cafe, on a terrace. I could see an old building's façade. I knew it was somewhere in downtown Lisbon. Searching for a clue I looked at the storefront window behind him and saw the reflection of a woman! Taking his photograph! At that moment I felt a sudden pain in my chest, that immediate rush of jealousy. Was he with her? Could it be? I went on Google maps and started searching on street view mode. It took me fifteen minutes but I found it. It was one of those popular healthy restaurants that served beautiful yogurts with granola and salads with “superfoods”. The kind of place where young girls go to take pretty pictures: #foodie, #wholefood, #vegan #glutenfree. At that point, I hated them both. He wouldn’t go anywhere for me and now he was eating whole grains and kale for some girl? Who was she, and how long had they been dating for her to be taking his picture? I immediately went on Facebook and started looking through his posts for “loves” and “likes”. And there I found four constant women on almost every post. How had I missed this? One of them was a sixty-year-old woman, maybe a friend of his mom, and show no threat, another had a picture with some guy who seemed to be her boyfriend. And I was left with two girls. I clicked on one of them: so pretty, made me want to cry and, as I searched through her page, I actually did cry! I was so jealous - “Was that our incompatibility? My face? I didn't know I was so out of your league!” - but after a while, as I found no evidence of a single connection, not even a “like” from him, I closed the case, wiped my ridiculous tears. I opened the last one: not a pretty girl, in fact, a bit ugly. He had liked her profile picture, but it was the only one. I searched through her timeline and there were all types of lame quotes, common places that lost their meaning by overuse and poor choice of words. In a word, “vulgarity”, all of it. The embodiment of “live laugh, love”. I couldn't stand this type of person. After some scrolling down, I recognized something, it was a post with a scene from his favorite movie. Here, I was certain. He made me watch that movie. I was so mad. He was doing the exact same thing with her. I couldn’t feel jealous of a girl like that, but I felt contempt. What pathetic kind of adoration would make a girl post something just because her boyfriend liked it? Like suddenly it was so meaningful to her. Nothing annoyed me more than chameleon-like personalities which to me was the same as having no personality. Oh, I bet she was the type of girl that “joked” about having an “intellectual boyfriend” and quoted him at any chance she would have, “ My boyfriend says…”. A little fool who put him on a pedestal! - “Was that the missing piece?- I thought -“Did you want a lover or a pupil?”- He lived for praise and that I would not give him!! What did they even talk about? I could not even fathom it. He must have done all the talking himself as he loved to hear his own voice. The more I thought about it, the funnier it got.

I felt like an absolute idiot, all those nights, staring at a green light. Certain of his feelings for me. I guess I never knew what he felt for me, even when he said he felt a lot. I wasn't even sure of the kind of person he was after all, but a wise man said “Show me your friends and I will tell you who you are ”, and he was now the boyfriend of a “not-that-interesting” girl. As to me, I deleted my Facebook account.