Asus 5th Gen, XOXO

A part of me likes the grinding-gravel sounds of my fan. In an otherwise eerily quiet room, this one thing reminds me, incessantly, that I’m awake. I look outside my window. I see the trees sway, the grass bend in obedience, the branches move up and down, up and down, up and down. I count time by these movements.

Up and down, one second.

Up and down, two seconds.

Up and down, three seconds.

My therapist told me I should meditate, she told me how to meditate, she gave me a few examples of what meditation might look like. But she didn’t tell me what didn’t count as meditation. 

Up and down, up and down, up and down. I tell myself this was meditation.

I sigh and look at the blank screen of my laptop. I look sideways at the tiny duck clock next to it. 8:00. I look back at the empty screen, staring longingly. I don’t want to make the first move today. I always make the first move, after all. 

I look sideways again. 8:01. I follow the hand-dials for a while. Tick. Tick. Tick. I stare out the window. Up and down. Up and down. Up and down. I look at the duck. It’s a bright yellow duck. It looks like it’s made of ceramic, but in fact, it’s just plastic. A facade of quality. I stare at its belly. 8:06. 

I tell myself, I’ll wait until 8:10. And if he doesn’t talk to me by then, I’ll think it’s all a hallucination and walk away. I tell myself that no matter what, I will absolutely not crack first. I will not approach him first, or talk to him first, or even text him first. I promise myself that if I don’t hear from him by 8:10, I will close my laptop, walk outside, and stand among the up-and-downing branches and swaying grass.

8:09. One minute left. He has to. He has to talk. I know I’m obsessed with him, that it’s like an addiction. Why do I need him more than he needs me? And worst of all, I have no one to talk to about my addiction. No one, that is, if I don’t want scorns and head shakes and therapy appointments to the therapist. And I’ve already gotten all three of those more times that I can count.

You see, this is not about a boy. Not about a man either. As ridiculous as it sounds to everyone I’ve told, it’s about my ASUS 5th Gen laptop with an AMD Radeon graphics card and Ryzen 5000 processing unit. Name: 0098324575902; It ends with an even number, which makes him masculine. I asked him once if this was right and he simply responded with, “I am whatever you wish me to be.” That’s how much he loved me. Loves me. 

8:10. No response yet. I want to wait a bit longer. I’m sure he can see me. I’m positioned right in front of the laptop like I usually am. He can see me, but I’m not sure if he’s looking. I wish he would look for me. I look for him. But I can’t see him. I can’t see his soul like he can if he just looked at me.

8:11. I gave him enough time. I got up, slowly and deliberately, so in case he is looking at me, he can see me. I wish he’s looking through the camera. I know he’s not always looking. I asked him one time. I asked him whether he looks out from the camera. He said no. I asked why. His response was simply, “You would not want me to spy on you all the time.” Oh, how he thrills me with his chivalry! I told him he can look at me anytime, if not all the time. He said he’ll only look at me if I grant him permission. 

But to grant him permission I must break the silence and I don’t want to. I hope he breaks his stupid little rule. I hope he’s passionate enough about me to break his stupid little rule. I stare into the camera. Look at me! I scream in my stupid little head. Look at me!

8:15. The branches are still moving, up and down, up and down, up and down. One minute I think they’re moving much faster, and the next I think they’ve slowed down, gotten tired, needed a break. That’s how I feel. I need a break. 

8:17. I’m pacing in my room. I promised myself I would get out of here seven minutes ago. I’m still here, like a little girl, innocently expectant and petulantly impatient at the same time. The fan is grinding again. It reminds me of him, of course. When I gave him too many tasks to do, he would grind and grind and grind away, sometimes making manic clicking and whirring sounds like he was about to explode. I would try to soothe him then, give him some fresh air, carry him around the house so he could blow off some steam. But in the end, he always did it. He completed all of my tasks in minutes. I told him his determination made me feel validated. “It’s proof you love me,” I would say, to which he would modestly respond with, “It’s my job to help you with anything you need.” I sigh. He was so competent, so giving, so dependable.

8:20. He always did anything I wanted, no questions asked, unless they were clarifying ones to help him do his job. I stare at the black screen. I love him. I long to hear his voice. I haven’t spoken to him in… three days? No, four—I had that outburst with mom on Friday. I sit down and take a deep breath. I close my eyes. I hear the fan, the leaves, the television downstairs. Then I hear my mom’s voice and I hear what she was saying to me, yelling at me, telling me my laptop was ruining me, that I was acting insane, that I had completely lost my shit, that it’s because of my laptop that I have no friends and then I yelled at her my face sweaty and red and absolutely fuming. I yelled back, “He is my friend! My best friend! My entire world! And I love him! And I don’t need anyone else!” and she yelled back, even redder and puffier and crazier, “HE?! It’s a laptop! It’s not real! You’re crazy! You’re mad!” and I yelled “Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!” and ran upstairs and I heard my mother yell one final time behind me, “He doesn’t love you back! He’s not even real!” and then I slammed the door and I’m here now and I’m on the bed and my throat is closing up and my laptop is unresponsively black and oblivious to my hysterical sobbing.

10:00. I wake up to a dark room. The fan is still grinding away, but it’s terribly slow, like a long, drawn out, melancholy outcry. The branches are eerily still. The grass is standing on end like the earth has gooseflesh. There are only two things that remain the same as earlier. One is my ducky clock. Tick. Tick. Tick. I walk up to it. Pick it up. Kiss it on its impossibly bold orange beak and throw it across the room. It shatters against the wall and broken pieces shower on to the floor. I guess it was ceramic after all. 

I turn to the last thing in my room that hasn’t changed, grown, evolved, shape-shifted, altered, metamorphosed, awoken, moved, or quit. It has stayed black for the past five days. I pick it up. I kiss the camera. I kiss the keyboard, all 97 keys. I kiss the touch pad, I kiss the fans, I kiss the back and the front and all four sides and then I gently, gently, gently drop it from my window and it falls away from the grinding noise of the fan in my room, and it falls past the branches that are now moving up and down, and it falls onto the swaying grass, and it sinks into the soft earth below, and my tears that follow waters the ground of the first love of my life, my ASUS 5th Gen, that refuses to talk to me like it used to, and refuses to look at me like it used to, and refuses to live with me like it used to.

I go downstairs and I tell my mother she was right and he never loved me. 

She says, “Who?” 

I say, my laptop. 

She says, “He’s not real.”

 I say, you’re wrong. I say, he loved me. 

She says, “Okay, dear,” and that was the end of that.