11/3/25

It's 10:44 at night. My room is pitch black, save for the light of my phone screen casting raspy breaths of light from the various TikToks that come and go as the night marches on. My head rests on the right side of the bed next to a tiny pink fan that accompanies my sleep every night, my body following in a “Z” shape, ends in the left corner, leaving very little room for anything but myself and my plethora of pillows. Though I have slept alone every night for what feels like the entirety of my life, tonight feels particularly desolate. Since May, I have followed a strict routine when it comes to sleep. I go to bed between 9-10 PM, about when my phone begins its “wind down” time when dark mode is turned on, calls are silenced, notifications are placed on do not disturb, and I am meant to ready myself for enough sleep to awake when my alarm goes off at 6. Tonight is different. As I lie awake, scrolling on my phone, I don't check for notifications I may have missed. I will be getting no calls, or reels that that remind someone of me, I will get no texts, goodnights, or otherwise. Tonight, for the first time in a long time, I will sleep completely alone. 

The funny thing about TikTok at night is that it finds a way to read your mind better than it does the rest of the day. At any other time, TikTok is just another app. I can ignore what I don't want to see, heart what I hope to see again, and scroll happily through videos of cats, couture, and AI-generated Ring Doorbell videos. But at night, it becomes an entirely different creature. After hours, TikTok finds your most vulnerable self, presenting the most painful information, and tonight was no special case. As I scrolled from couples' costumes, to the most horrific breaking news stories, then back to a five-minute-long video about long-distance relationships (and how to make them work), I came across a video - or rather, a song featured in a video - that I was not nearly ready to encounter. 

‘It's nice to hear you say “Hello”. 

And “How are things with you, I love you”’

The words cut me deeper than I was prepared for, leaving me lying in bed in shambles with no way to stop the bleeding. I decided that now was as good a time as ever. I had already heard the words, and knowing my brain, they weren't going to go anywhere anytime soon. I switched over to Spotify, scouring for a song I had heard eons ago, buried beneath years of found, liked, and forgotten songs from a past version of myself. Reading the lyrics as they went, I played the song over once, twice, three times, feeling every word linger on my tongue as if I had sung them myself. One day down, and a lifetime to go, I couldn't stop myself from yearning for the alternate life that Labi Siffre had laid out for me somewhere out there. On the fourth listen, I followed along as Siffre sang.

“It's nice, the way you say my name. 

Not very fast or slow, just soft and low.

The same as when you tell me how you feel. 

I feel the same way, too. 

I’m very much in love with you”.

I felt the breath leave my lungs, as if the wind was knocked from within me. Suddenly, I was struggling to swallow the golf ball-shaped lump in my throat. Maybe it was the fan, breezing directly into my increasingly dried-out eyes, or perhaps it was something else, but before I even realized what was happening, the pillow that lay under my cheek became wetter than it was just a moment ago. I didnt dare move a muscle. My face remained motionless, my fingers clutching the body pillow between my arms harder than I realized. As still as I lie, the salty pool beneath my face grew bigger. My tear ducts could not be controlled as easily as my body, that, in the heat of the moment and height of emotions, was beginning to feel as though it could no longer keep down my dinner. I was craving something. An element in my life that I had somehow grown accustomed to, despite how hard I tried to convince myself that I didnt need it. And now it was gone, lingering just long enough to live in the words of a song that was not even meant for me. 

I sat up, blinking rapidly as if the act of wiping my face with my hands would be too much of an acknowledgement for the weak moment I had just had alone in the dark. I paused the song, closed Spotify, shut off my phone, turned it onto its screen, and shoved it under my pillow, not to be looked at again for the remainder of my night. How dare TikTok? And how dare Labi Siffre? How dare my night betray me like this? I couldn't stand to think about it any longer, the sheer nerve of the universe to present such an event when I had managed to keep such a good, straight face all day long. Naturally, I thought of nothing else until I was whisked away to a lack luster nights sleep.

It's become something of a trend in recent years - yearning. This soul-crushing, gut-wrenching desire for anything in general. Yet as I lie in bed, having survived a sneak attack of emotions I hadn't even realized I had spent the entire day suppressing, I find myself questioning how much of a joke it really is. When I think about the things I’ll miss, the things that meant the most to me, the things I dread having to replace, physical things never come to mind. Rather, my focus is affixed to the elements that even writing them down can't come close to explaining. The softness of a name, a hand on my own, an inside joke, a version of me only seen by one pair of eyes. It isn't so much the person as the time it took to know them. When I least expected it, when I had heard all the songs I needed to and cried all the tears I had thought I had left, a surprise attack knocked me off my feet, and right back into the fetal position I once lay in, breathing in the smell of a cologne that was and always will be the only thing left behind. A new song appeared, a new old song I had forgotten I knew, only making it sting that much more to rediscover it when I did. 

The next morning, I awoke to the sound of my alarm. I reached for my phone, grabbing it from its hiding place of shame I had so forcefully shoved it into after last night's embarrassment. No texts, no calls, no body. I opened Spotify and played the song one more time. Why is it that a love song almost hurts more than a song actually about what I’m feeling? And why can't I stop myself from seeking it out? Like a scab right on the peak of your ankle that, no matter how much it bleeds, you can't help but rip open, a sad song, or rather a song that makes you sad, itches something deeper than my fingers can reach. Whatever it is that it scratches, I think it is that deep-seated part of me, the one that yearns, hopes, pleads, and begs to live in that alternate life. A life where distance isn't a factor, where time is nothing more than something to be spent together. A life where loneliness is as easy a fix as a phone call. 

It truly is such a lovely song. A song about love and closeness. It is a happy song, but for where I am right now, alone in my room, alone at work, alone biking to and from the Post Office to donate the pair of shoes you said you liked, its happiness is lost on me. Instead, it feels cruel and calculated. A calice reminder of what I am without. It's funny the power a song can have when the lyrics really resonate with you. Spending so much time consuming songs for the fun of it, the lyrics blend into the instrumental, becoming just another element of what makes it sound so good. But when a chord is struck that strikes a chord with you, it almost feels personal. Of course, I had to find this song now, amidst a slew of emotions yet to have their time to process. Hopefully, one day, when they have, I can come back to Labi Siffre and feel the love he clearly knows all too well wash over me, without the painful remainders of who I would like to sing it to. 

Now, I will continue to lie in bed, staring at my ceiling, touched delicately by the soft man-made breeze of my tiny pink fan, and I will listen to a man sing the words I wish I could still say. I will close my eyes as he sings the chorus and drift away with it still ringing in my mind.

“Strange how a phone call can take you away. 

Take you away.

Away from the feeling of being alone,

Bless the telephone.”