What a QuaranTIME to be Alive

bear.   his name is bear. he's missing his pink bow, but he is still bear. bear sits on my bed, right next to my pillow. he is there when i lie awake at night, tossing and turning feeling like the world is ending wondering why we couldn't hold on. i still have the elephant you got me from your hometown. the one made of wood with a baby elephant inside. i keep it on my desk, under the shelves. its eyes seem to follow me every time i pace the room, worn out but resolute, knowing that we couldn't hold on.  i still have the notebook with our birthday blessings in it. the one in which, on a whim, we decided to  take turns blessing each other  every time a birthday rolled around. i hope the blessings still remain even though we broke like the pen that spilt ink all over centuries-old parchment. it was inevitabe that we couldn't hold on. i still have the inferiority complex i got from being the odd one out for 10 years. it sits right next to my impostor syndnrome and my consta

it's your favourite kind of weather tonight. stormy, windy, not too cold but cold enough to want to curl up on your favourite chair and soak it all in. i brewed your favourite cup of chai tonight. ginger, cinnamon and tea leaves steeped in water and  boiled with milk for as long as it takes to sing two  of your favourite songs. i made your favourite bowl of maggi tonight. soupy, but not too soupy. it's warm and comforting. i leaned forward and let the  steam condense on my face like you used to do. i leaned my head against the windowsill and  drew smiley faces on the window with my breath. i listened to your favourite album on repeat using every lyric, every melody, to try and call you home. it's been a while since i've heard you sing or seen you dance like you did before. i wait at the door and i worry  for you, out there alone, punishing yourself for a crime you did not commit. so i make all your favourite things and i sing all your favourite songs while the world out

dear may, welcome to 2020. i hope you don't mind the clutter. there's a lot that has been happening lately, and i wasn't able to clear up before you got here.  but come in, my dear, come in, make yourself at home. kick up your feet on the coffee table for a while.  a lot has happened since your last visit. the last time you saw me, my family and i were enjoying a zambian winter. this time, you've found me in my flat, living with people i am lucky to get to call my uni-family. there have been some developments, some setbacks, quite a few surprises, and a whole lot of change.  but i like to think that i'm still the same person, underneath it all. changes have been wrought, but i don't think that they've made me utterly unrecognisable- after all, you were able to find me, even though an entire year has passed! how are you doing, though? i hope you're alright. because i have some news. it may upset you. but i think it something you need

Hello, you. This has been a long time coming. You may be wondering why I'm writing this, because I know that you know that I’ve not always been kind to you. I’ve criticised your every move, well-intentioned though it may be. I’ve treated you poorly for as long as I can remember. I never gave you the attention and care that you always wanted, but could never ask for. I’ve kept you up all night and never gave you a reason for it. I deprived you of nourishment because I didn't think you deserved it. I didn't think you were good enough. I think I need to start by apologising. For all of this. For every time I saw you and hated you to your core. For each time I wished you were different, or ‘better’. For how long it took me to realise what I was doing to you. For not loving you like you deserve to be loved. I wish I could turn back time and do it right from the start. But I can’t. I can never get that time back.  But right now, I'm spending more ti

Yes, the title is in all caps. Why? Well, read on to find out! (PS- am I doing this clickbait thing right?) Context time! As I've written about before, this is a weird time ™ to be alive, full of a lot of feelings. And not all of them are positive. To be very honest with you, hardly any of them are. It has never been easier to get caught up in negativity. One may preach about trying to look for the positives in everything, but it DOES get difficult. Like, rip-out-your-hair, cry-five-times-a-day kind of difficult. The kind of difficult that leaves you wondering if you will ever be able to pull yourself out of this slump. You know? In search of some positivity, I turn to my three best friends, as I always have done. I've known and loved them for over 10 years now. It is to them I run whenever anything happens, good or bad. Through the ups and downs, even the diagonals, the one constant is them. Our group chat is our safe space.  The past couple of weeks, pre

The last few days have been… difficult. Even more so than usual. And the worst part is, I could not pinpoint a cause. My best guess is that too many small, seemingly insignificant events added up and exploded when I was least expecting. It seems to me that these days, all of us are weathering out storms of our own. Or maybe, we always were, and now we just have more time to devote to storm fighting. But I got so tired of fighting against my inner tsunami that I gave up, dried my tears, threw my coat on, and went for a walk to clear my head. I put my Spotify playlist on shuffle and tried to calm myself down, tried to zone out of all that negativity. The keyword here is ‘tried’. And by god, I tried so hard to get out of that place, but I just couldn't. My brain has a funny habit of repressing gloomy, pessimistic thoughts for the most part, only releasing them when I'm at my weakest. My brain, I've discovered, likes to play tricks on me.  But that’s a whole ot