it's 11:30 pm and I'm texting your boyfriend. Well, not necessarily you, the person reading this, but someone like you. A girl who has no idea that the guy she loves is currently telling what he wants to do to me and sending snapchats of his IRL eggplant emoji.
I'm the side chick.
I'm not a whore, although you probably want to call me one. I'm not even a bitch - I'm actually a pretty nice person. I have friends and family who love me, and I don't fit the "other woman" stereotype.
You know the one I mean - the all perfect Instagram shots, with swoon-worthy hair and curves in all the right places. Trust me when I say that isn't me.
I'm not special. I am not prettier than you, funnier than you or better in bed than you. I'm not a "slut" - I don't have one-night stands or go out with the specific aim of taking someone home. I'm not a gold digger. I'm fairly ordinary really.
And yet at least five of my most recent "relationships" (and I use that term loosely) have been with men who are... well, already in relationships.
I have friends who will never be this person. The second they hear a guy has a girlfriend, that's it - he's off limits, and they won't even entertain the idea of starting something up.
I don't know why I'm different. I don't know why I seem to be drawn to the taken,like the proverbial moth toward the (cheating) flame.
A close male friend of mine thinks it's because I have "commitment issues." His theory is that if a guy is unavailable, then he's instantly more attractive to me because I know it's not going to go anywhere.
Personally though, I think the rom-com style movies and books I love so much have warped my mind, and I'm addicted to the idea of a grand romance that must overcome all obstacles (i.e., you) before I can get to the "happily ever after" bit.
In my imagination, I'm not the Mia from Love Actually (ugh) type - I don't set out to seduce someone. I'm Jennifer Lopez from The Wedding Planner, or Meredith from Greys anatomy when Derek was married but not dead. I'm the one he was destined to be with and I'm the one he ends up with.
Except that's never actually happened of course.
What never ceases to surprise me is how many guys are so willing to cheat. These aren't "players" that I go for. They're not Jersey Shore guys who will sleep with anything that moves - they're just normal men who love their girlfriends but, for some reason, take only the tiniest of pushes to enter the realm of infidelity.
Then again, maybe it's simple; maybe humans aren't made to be monogamous. At least that's what Eamon*, the pilot I met in a South American hostel, told his girlfriend over FaceTime... just before he asked her if he could sleep with me. Spoiler alert; she said no. Double spoiler alert; we did it anyway.
What I want to make clear is that I'm not sitting here cackling evilly and trying to break you up - I just seem to be missing the part of my brain that should feel empathy for you.
I am not an uncaring person. I donate to charity, I cry at long-lost-family reality shows. I can't bear to see an animal scared or in pain. But you? You aren't real to me. I haven't met you. I don't know you. And somehow that lets me do this.
It allows me to be the side chick with no guilt, just frustration that I can't see him more, that he's not free tonight because he's playing host to your parents or taking you out for your birthday.
Perhaps it would be different if I'd been cheated on, but I haven't, so maybe I just can't comprehend the pain that comes with the discovery of the infidelity.
So all I can say to that is that I'm not sorry but I wish I was.
