A fresh start.

Prompts by Escapril

I awake some days to already stale mornings, like coffee left out from the night before and smoke breaks in inadequately ventilated spaces.

The pounding headache from 2 a.m. insomnia clawing at the scar on my brow, burning retinas, millisecond blackouts, unsteady feet and foul moods — I carry over the acrid taste of yesterday and days before as though some thick paste of regret I can neither scrape off my tongue nor swallow past.

I stumble through the day, hiding from the sun and thoughts that blare an unforgiving light, the kind that exposes all the things you want to conceal. Setting out, I already know that all I want to do is be back home already and wallow, sleep it out until the next day.

Yeah, some days you know in advance it’s going to be a bad one. Still, I think it’s okay to allow yourself that sometimes. Time to wallow, to indulge in some of the pain and ache. Not always in a rush to fix things or to look on the bright side, to not let the day go to waste, to turn the day around. It’s a process, it takes time.

That’s why I think it’s important to let yourself acknowledge the bad parts too. It’s important to complain and wallow sometimes. After all, you cannot hope to heal when you don’t know where it hurts and why.

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Note : A little while back, I found out about this month-long poetry/prose/flash fiction challenge called Escapril, and which proposes the most wonderful prompts. Now, it is unlikely that I will be able to do a prompt a day. But you can look forward to reading some posts inspired by these writing prompts(I already have my eye on a few of them lol). Today’s post quite coincidentally matches the first day theme and boy am I glad for it. Anyway, you can find out more about Escapril on their Instagram page!

 

Self care.

Art by : Yao Yao Ma Van As

What a beautiful Saturday it has been. All slow and liberating, the kind of simple thing that takes a huge weight off your chest, like going on a stroll for fresh air. I feel like I have turned into a cloud, that if I were a colour I would probably be peach, and if I were to be anyone I could be, I would really much rather be me.

It is the first time though that this kind of weightlessness has not felt like drifting. There is something so strong in me: the feeling of being grounded. It is not like before, when weightlessness made me feel like a kite that had broken its string. Now, I am more like a flag wound about a mast, enjoying the freshness of the breeze. Or like a boat, moored to the docks, rocking from side-to-side with the tide.

I am so grounded, so at peace with all that I am.

I am conscious of my issues and challenges, all the flaws I must work on, all the regrets and anxieties I have accumulated. But not now. Not as I cut my overgrown nails with care, not as I exfoliate my skin with some divine, peach-scented, pebbly scrub. Not as I scrape the toxic fumes of city life from my lungs, or as I apply some sea-coloured gel (All Tea Tree Oil and Witch Hazel) to the darkened bumps on my face.

My troubles will wait.

They will not be going away anytime soon, so what is the hurry to worry about them? Will that change anything?

I’ve decided to not worry about things I cannot change anymore.

What does worry even do anyway? It takes away time and peace of mind and gives nothing but anxiety in return.

I will not worry about things I cannot change.

So here I am, enjoying a casual Saturday with myself, rediscovering my own thoughts, remembering my own little life fondly. I haven’t done this in a long time:

Indulging.

I don’t like the word. I don’t like that I don’t like it.

But for a moment, that moment of…of self care feels like greeting an old friend again after a long time. There’s a lot to catch up on, but at the same time you talk about non-big-life-events-or-changes for much longer than necessary. You have a conversation for pleasure, because you can. There is no practical purpose to the talking. It is not a means to an end. It is an end in and of itself. I am talking to you not because I have something in particular to say, but because I want to talk to you. What we talk about is secondary, so long as I am talking to, with you.

And so I had conversations with myself, had my conscious brain meet my imagination again. Peacefully, Saturday went by.

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Note: Hi, I hope all of you have been doing well ! That is all, that’s the note 😂 Sending you all good vibes! ^^

Everyone is a loser at some point

Art by: Cynthia Tedy

Sometimes there’s just no other way around it. There’s no shedding light on the darkness, no driving the negativity away. There’s no miracle cure to all of life’s problems.

Sometimes, it’s like a bad case of the flu. You just have to stick with it. Break out in a cold sweat, hurl all you’ve eaten out, have a fever, shiver but also feel too hot. You just have to eat soup and crackers and take lots of fluids. But even then, it’s no cure. There are days when you won’t be able to make it all better. Days when you just have to play with the hand you are dealt, even if that means you have to sit this round out and wait for the next one. Even if that means you get to feel bad when you watch your friends or people you don’t like cash in those sweet, sweet opportunities. Some days, you just…have rotten luck.  And you just have to drag your sore, beaten up corpse of a body to bed and call it a day.

And it’s okay if it lasts longer than that. It’s okay. Because you aren’t meant to win all the time. You aren’t even meant to win most of the time. All you are meant to do is try your best. No one can ask any more of you than that. And it so happens that some days, your best involves you staying in bed, recovering. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

 

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Note: This is Day 19 of my NaNoWriMo Writing Challenge. Granted, writing everyday is becoming a little grating, but I’m sticking with it. I’m seeing this through even if I have to crawl to reach that finish line. Aha…hahahah…ha. But hopefully, I’ll be seeing things in a different light before November ends 🙂