Rosie In Real Life
by Kerry Mahony
@rosie.irl (9 January 2023, posted 9.30am)
A paparazzi photo of the Olsen Twins wearing long black coats and sunglasses, smoking cigarettes. Text reads: “Monday mood”
“I want us to try an experiment,” Claire says. “What would happen if you only looked up Rosie’s Instagram once a day?”
“That feels impossible.”
“Why’s that, Eliza?” She asks.
“It’s unrealistic. You can’t just stop an addiction that easily. If alcoholics stopped drinking cold turkey they could die.” I look down as I say this, embarrassed by the petulance in my voice and the fact that I just compared Instagram stalking to substance abuse.
“I understand. Habits are difficult to break. What if we tried twice a day?”
I feel nauseous at the thought of looking her up so infrequently. “Three?” I ask. “I could maybe try that.”
“Well, let’s start with that. Ideally I’d like for you to eventually get to a place where you don’t look Rosie up at all. Wouldn’t that feel freeing? Letting her go?”
No shit, Claire, I think. Many things would improve my life if only I had the means to obtain them: an apartment that’s not riddled with mould, the ability to have unlimited pints and cigarettes with no health repercussions, a fat inheritance from a wealthy relative. If only life was so simple.
The truth is, the idea of stopping feels outrageous. When I’m not looking her up, I am thinking about it, and I recreate this cycle from the moment I wake up until I go to sleep. I live for the tiny jolts of adrenaline that I get when I see where she’s buying her CBD beverages, what novel she’s reading, which of her friends’ DJ sets she’s going to. I follow every brand she tags and find myself buying products she’s posted about. I bob my head to her latest Spotify playlist as I hoover my bedroom. I am so used to consuming these snippets of her life that I struggle to know where Rosie ends and I begin. But I don’t know how to vocalise this in a way that doesn’t feel acutely humiliating.
“How does it feel when you look at her profile?” Claire asks.
It feels like the woozy head-rush I get from smoking a rollie or the all-consuming guilt I feel after gorging on greasy fast food.
“It makes me feel like shit.”
She glances at her watch and I stiffen. I want to talk, really talk, but I don’t know how to condense it into the five minutes we have left. I am distracted by the ticking clock, the roar of traffic outside, my phone heavy in my pocket. Then the time is up and Claire tells me that we can discuss it again next Monday. She tells me to stick to the deal. Three searches a day.
As I’m leaving I go to the bathroom, sit on the toilet, and pull out the vape I bought on impulse on the way here. I exhale a cloud of strawberry-flavoured smoke and bat the vapours away. I pull out my phone, open Instagram, and search Rosie’s name.
@rosie.irl (20 January 2023, posted 11.25pm)
A post re-shared from a poetry page. The poem is ‘To the Woman Crying Uncontrollably in the Next Stall’ by Kim Addonizio. Text under the image: three heart emojis.
Rosie has won a writing competition and I am stoned in my room. I am convinced that her use of recreational drugs is strictly reserved for fun, social and cool occasions, like the event she is at tonight. She is out with the club promoter and the pouty journalist, drinking martinis in rooms lit by red lighting. I click through the photos and embellish them with movement and dialogue. I can almost hear them talking about the projects they’re working on and the sample sales they’re going to attend. Maybe one of them whips out a baggie and the night is elevated by the conspiratorial glee of sneaking off to the bathroom together. I imagine the burn of the lines and the dopamine flooding their brains. It makes my left eye twitch.
Claire wants me to journal about my feelings but instead I scroll. I read her gushing captions about her perfect, beautiful friends. She is so grateful to the universe, she says, for bringing them together. I wonder if she made jokes about their deepest, most shameful insecurities to a room full of people. If she ever put her hands on one of their arms and slowly dug her nails in, hard enough to break skin. It’s more comforting to think that Rosie has done this with everyone. If I was the only one, that would confirm what I have always been afraid of—that there is something fundamentally wrong with me and that she could see it too.
I lied to Claire. I haven’t been sticking to the deal. I muted her last week, thinking it was progress, but her account is still the first one to appear when I type in the first letter of her username. Her photo lights up with a pink circle. Nausea settles in my throat and I have no choice but to look. She has shared a poem. This isn’t unusual for her; she likes to signal that she’s artsy and intellectual and better than others. But this isn’t just any poem. “Fuck you,” I say to Rosie in my room. “I showed you that.”
@rosie.irl (27 January 2023, posted 7pm)
A photo of a girl sitting across from Rosie at a wine bar. Text reads: “Bestie is back from Berlin!!!!”
“Why don’t you tell me how the last week has been?” Claire takes a sip of tea which makes her glasses steam up. We chuckle awkwardly as she wipes them on her t-shirt.
“It’s been… fine.” I choose my words carefully. “I guess I’m starting to realise how bad this habit has been for me.”
“That’s great.” The sincerity in her voice makes me feel like more of a fraud. “Tell me more.”
“Well, as we spoke about last week, I know that I’ve created a false view of Rosie. Sure, she seems perfect online, but she can’t be happy. She was so horrible when we lived together.”
“Horrible how?”
“She could always find reasons to punish me for something. Using the bathroom for too long, wearing an outfit that she thought looked nicer than her own, talking for too long when she had a story she wanted to tell.”
“How did it make you feel?”
“Pathetic. I felt like I was so much more fixated on her than she was on me. But then she would do things, like stay up until three in the morning telling me all her secrets. She actually kissed me once, after we finished our Christmas exams, the night she gave me my first pill. I thought maybe she actually liked me back but it just never happened again. Didn’t stop her from dangling the possibility over my head though.”
“That must have been very confusing.”
“It was a headfuck. She’s this posh, straight, South Dublin girl, you know? I don’t even know why she was interested in me. Maybe she just liked the attention.” My voice cracks. “Maybe I’m the obsessed one. Maybe I’m just a creep.”
Claire cuts in. “I don’t think you’re a creep, Eliza. You’ve made great progress. I’m proud of you.” I don’t know how to tell her that I haven’t changed. That I look at Rosie’s page while I’m waiting for the bus, at my desk, when the kettle boils.
“You said that she seems perfect online. You know that nobody’s life looks exactly how it is presented on social media. People might think the same when they look at your profile.” Claire looks satisfied, as if she is presenting me with a brand new nugget of information, and I try not to snort. I doubt people think much of anything when they look me up, if they even bother. I only have a handful of posts because I compulsively archive them all. Even my profile picture is just a flat colour, pale blue.
“Do you disagree?” Claire asks.
“I mean, yeah. Nobody is jealous of me, I’m certain of it. I basically don’t even have an online presence. It makes me feel weird.”
“Do you want one?”
“Maybe.”
“Well, what’s holding you back?”
I know the answer, but instead I tear at a hangnail until it bleeds.
“Let’s try not looking at all next week.” Claire’s voice sounds very far away.
“Sure.” I stand up too quickly and black spots appear in my vision. When I’m leaving I accidentally cross the road at a red light while I’m looking at my phone and a cyclist shouts, making me jump.
At home, I look through my Instagram drafts, a graveyard of all the things I was too afraid to share. There’s the short film I made for my final year project, a sappy post about finishing college, a photo where I thought I looked hot. Usually I am able to convince myself that I’m better off without online validation, because I’m living life in the real world. But I know that everyone wants the likes and comments and attention. We’re hard-wired for it. Those who post are just being honest about their desires.
Then I see it on my Explore page, the poem that Rosie shared. The one I read to her all those years ago. I was always coming to her with recommendations of things I thought she’d love. She took it all greedily and kept them even when she was done with me. I re-read the last line again: listen I love you joy is coming.
Perhaps it’s my time to stop hiding. My hands shake as I press the tiny arrow to share the graphic. Once it’s uploaded, I squeeze my eyes shut and throw my phone on the couch as if it’s a grenade. I go into the garden and smoke two cigarettes in a row. I walk back inside when I’m done, lightheaded. I dig my phone out from beneath the cushions and scan the list of names that have viewed my story. There she is.
@rosie.irl (2 February 2023, posted 6pm)
Photo taken inside Rosie’s sitting room. A neon sign that reads ‘GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS’ glows pink in the corner. Pearl (2022) is on the television. Text reads: “I fucking love female rage.”
I feel restless after posting. Rosie’s page is unsettlingly quiet and I need to do something to stop myself from checking it every two minutes. I decided that she would cook herself a delicious, healthy, Instagrammable dinner. I haven’t gone to the supermarket in weeks, I’ve barely been eating at all, and when I pass the mirror in the hallway I can tell it’s obvious. My hair is greasy and stringy, my skin pale and pimpled.
I bypass my usual Lidl in favour of the artisan shop, the one that calls food “produce” and sells olive oil and tinned fish with artfully designed labels. I load up my basket with luxurious snacks, grab a bottle of white wine, and pray that my card doesn’t decline. Back home, I fry prawns in garlic and hum along to music. I think about how miserable I have been the past few months, how my fixation with Rosie was stopping me from doing all the things I used to enjoy: writing, going on walks, watching films. Maybe this obsession was all leading up to something. Tomorrow, I decide, marks a new chapter. In the morning she’s getting blocked.
The front door opens and my housemate Niamh walks in. “Hey, Eliza.” She says, hanging her coat up. “Cooking for a date?”
“Oh, no.” I smile, trying to mask the mild horror that arises when I realise how long it’s been since I’ve done that. “Just a little date with myself.”
She pulls herself up to perch on the counter and grins. “Self care vibes. That’s good.” I like Niamh and her curly hair and collection of brightly coloured scarves. She works in a bar around the corner. I used to always call in and visit her, nursing a free pint and reading my book.
“Do you want a glass?” I ask.
“Yeah, go on.”
I pour my third glass and take a photo of my dinner for my story. I see Niamh notice but she doesn’t comment and I’m grateful not to have to explain. She produces another bottle, red this time, a Christmas gift. We keep the back door open to go out for smokes. It feels good to talk and laugh. Claire would be proud.
Niamh starts yawning around midnight. “I’m gonna hit the hay, but this was fun!” She squeezes my shoulder on her way upstairs. As soon as I hear her bedroom door close I feel it, that sharp twist in the pit of my stomach, like I am falling from a great height. My phone beckons again, and I swipe up to see who has seen the photo I posted, which now looks significantly less gourmet than I thought it did. Sure enough, Rosie has. I click onto her page and start scrolling. I’m allowed one more go, I tell myself, before I start fresh tomorrow. I go all the way back, following her through her travels in Vietnam, past her yoga teacher training that she did in lockdown, then all the way back to college in 2019, until I see me.
It’s Halloween and we’re in our first year apartment on campus. Rosie is dressed as an angel, me as a devil. Rosie’s arm is flung over me and I’m laughing into her shoulder. It’s jarring to see my younger self staring back at me. I remember how I felt when she posted it, the exhilarating achievement of making it onto her feed. I feel a yearning for those times, the pride of being on her arm. And I miss her. I miss her so much it hurts. I start to type. “Miss this! Hope you’re doing well xxxx”
I know I’m playing with fire, but my judgement is blurred from the wine and I need her constant presence in my mind to stop. Maybe all the animosity I’d felt the last few years was just in my head; perhaps all those bad feelings between us never really existed and were just a product of my anxiety. Reconnecting could fix everything. I need to know if she still thinks about me. As I post it, my ears start to ring. Then I refresh the page, waiting.
I refresh again.
Once more.
And something happens. Her profile picture disappears and changes to the default one, replacing Rosie with an anonymous grey silhouette. I slap my hand over my mouth. “Fuck.” Bile rises in my throat. “Shit, shit, shit. This can’t be happening.” I continue to try and refresh the page, but nothing’s there. “No. Come back, Rosie. Come back.” I cannot look away from the white light of the phone. It wasn’t meant to happen this way. She wasn’t supposed to get there first. It was meant to be me.
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Kerry Mahony is a writer and creative based in Dublin. She has covered art, design and culture for DJ Mag and Totally Dublin, with prose published in Lesbian Art Circle and BROAD Zine. She is the co-founder of HONEYPOT, a club night and community for gay girls and friends.
