He Always Wakes Up Early

Did you ever see that episode of Sex and the City where Carrie dates the musician guy with some sort of undiagnosed ADHD? Well… That’s what it’s like dating Brown Eyes. It’s lovely and all, he makes me laugh no end and he’s so adorably cute and cheeky, you can’t help but fall in love with him. But man is it exhausting. Everything with him is a hundred miles an hour, from the moment he wakes up in the morning to the moment he goes to bed at night and it’s exhausting. Fun but exhausting. And he smokes pot too… Could you imagine what he’d be like sober? Jeeeez. Seriously though, I’ve made fun of him a lot for it – the undiagnosed attention disorder I’m sure he has. He laughs along too, it’s all in good fun, but I’m starting to wonder if there’s some truth to it.

He has an “addictive personality” or so he tells me, and that’s why he smokes pot – he had to give up drinking because he was starting to develop a pretty bad addiction, and instead of taking antidepressants and other such medication for his past anxiety, stress and depression, he started smoking instead and has done for many years. He’s a functioning stoner – one who gets up and goes to work, not a druggie who can’t hold down a job, and he’s never going to touch alcohol again for as long as he lives. That’s fine by me, I’m basically the same. I also have an addictive personality and replaced alcohol (and a number of other drugs, both legal and otherwise) with pot. I’m also a functioning stoner, or at least I like to think so.

But he’s starting to exhaust me. Our fourth date, a two-nighter, was beautiful as always but by the time I got home, I could barely manage a cup of tea before collapsing into bed and falling asleep before midnight. For the insomniac who rarely makes it to bed before 3am, that’s pretty impressive. It’s not just the exhausting nights either, it’s the early mornings too. He wakes me up so damn early, 8am the first morning and then 530am the second. He always wakes up early. He’s a morning person. A couple of times he’s had errands to run and he’s gone off and done that before I even have a chance to wake up properly but usually, he’s just around and making a lot of noise. It pisses me off no end.

He puts music on, usually loud baby-making R&B because that’s his jam, with a really bassy undertone to shake me out of bed just in case the noise wasn’t bad enough. Then comes the kettle – that goddamn noisy kettle that just whistles and whistles and whistles on the hob until you lift it off. He seems to find it hilariously funny to let the kettle whistle for as long as possible just to piss me off. One day, he’ll come home and that kettle will be in the garbage. We’ll see who finds it funny then.

While he’s waiting for the kettle to make that oh-so-annoying noise, he rolls a spliff. I’m not really a wake-and-baker so the smell wafting through the house annoys me a little. And once all that is done and he’s successfully made sure I won’t ever get back to sleep ever again, he comes in, delicately places my cup of tea on the bedside cabinet and jumps on me, smothering me in kisses, wrapping me up tight in the duvet.

I want so much to be so angry at him, this man who wakes me up STUPIDLY early first thing in the morning but I’m not. It just makes me giggle. Even the exhausting, shit stuff with this guy is amazing. It’s like he can do no wrong.

He took me to a sea life place / aquarium and it was amazing. He childishly asked questions and bugged the guides and staff until they let us into places the general public aren’t allowed to go. He’s magical to watch, people just agree to whatever he asks. If he wants to get into the restricted breeding area of the aquarium, that’s where he’s going and he’ll charm his way in there if it’s the last thing he does… All so he can take me with him by the hand and watch the guilty smile on my face as I marvel at the tiny baby rays I have in front of me, plus the really big ray no one ever sees because he’s too big to go in the public viewing tank. It was magical. Just magical. It was worth being woken up at 530am for.

It’s like dating Peter Pan. He doesn’t know how to control himself in public. He doesn’t know how to grow up. He’s loud, too loud, and although it makes me cringe, it also makes me laugh. Giggle hysterically in fact. He’s very addictive, being around him is so addictive and despite my exhaustion and the fact I literally couldn’t keep up with him anymore, I genuinely didn’t want to come home. That, for me, is saying something. Something very big indeed.

But he’s always doing something. He can’t sit still for very long, much like me, and he can’t sleep for long either, much like me. We’re very similar and I wonder if maybe my can’t-sit-still attitude is this exhausting for other people? He’s either rolling or smoking or making tea or making a phone call or rubbing his hands all over me or doing some laundry or doing the dishes or replacing some bit on the van or checking his downloads or replying to emails or…

Literally, that’s what life is like with him. Non-stop, always something, no commas, no breathing space, even when he’s sat watching TV he’s doing something. Usually me.

I’m falling head over heels for this guy though, good old Brown Eyes and that familiarity I can’t quite put my finger on. I may have already fallen. In fact, I’m very sure of that. He’s captivating. I’m captivated by everything about him from the good things to his “flaws”. Waking up early seems a small price to pay when you’re this happy. And I really am happy. So happy I can’t believe it’s happening to me.

I’m really hoping this won’t go wrong.

It’ll hurt my heart awfully if it does.