tryna think about what to write about all day, and finally it’s hit me.

i’m tired.

i am physically worn-out. i am in need of sleep. i feel like my heart has gotten more good exercise in the last few weeks than it’s had in the last year and expanded several sizes, and it’s great but it’s work too.

for once: what i’m not is tired of life.

i am joyful. i am experimenting with joy, and the results are more wonderful than i had imagined they could be.

my legs are cramping if i so much as pull on my calves even a little bit. my arms feel weak. my hands feel strained from carrying grocery bags. there’s a part of my body which is just the slightest bit ache-y which hasn’t been like that in a long time. these aches are good. they’re satisfying; like they attend a feeling of accomplishment.

my head has that heaviness that suggests lying down will result in sleep seconds later — a really delightful heaviness, to be sure, for someone who barely managed catnaps.

with coming down from hypomania i feel like my emotional range has actually expanded. euphoria at the world and existing is wonderful and enjoyable. it feels great. but having those feelings — and even stronger! — without an altered mood state? just because the events that are happening are really that intense? that they resonate with who i am and what i want that deeply, and aren’t simply riffing off of an episode?

— and this is not to discount my feelings while hypomanic. but seeing the world as it is when i’m more me and less an altered me is where i want to be. —

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i’m tired, and i’m so ready for tomorrow.

today i’m listening to “prelude” by “the noisy freaks”, the first track in the album “straight life”. (ha.)

there’s a quiet piano opening, and like, that’s always going to elicit a response from me. for most of my life, piano has been a really big thing. there’s almost always been one in my house, wherever i’ve lived. there was a short time between moving out of my family’s house when i was 18, and then spending my first pay cheque on a digital piano. maybe 3 months. i’ve taken that piano with me ever since, so literally 3 months in 27 years have i been without a piano at my disposal.

it’s .. wistful music? it makes me feel reflective. there’s some synth stuff going on, the key isn’t happy or sad so much as contemplative. the energy picks up, for sure, but it mostly propels my thoughts along the same lines rather than changing tracks. again, i’m drawn to expressing how i’m neither happy nor sad nor neutral, but in a different place; maybe a different time, as my thinking reaches into the past.

even the name “prelude” evokes something. on the one hand, it’s the first track of the album. the last track is called “outro (bonne nuit)”. it’s not exactly difficult to work out what’s happening. but in terms of my relation to the music .. well, it’s talking about a beginning, right? and so while it encourages me to think into the past, the best thing you can do with that is to take what you’ve learned and apply it to the future. in this sense i feel like this kind of music is preparatory, consolidatory (is that a word? it is now.), asking you to grow up, to accept your mistakes, and to not repeat them.

it may be that these feelings the music evokes are unique to me; like the piano opening, instruments and samples used throughout bring me back to earlier times in my life, automatically drawing my thoughts across the span of time from then until now. it’s a vaguely retro/90’s-themed album, though, so maybe that’d hold for a bunch of people my age who had similar interests to me.

there’s something haunting about it. maybe reflection is always haunting, revealing the indefatigability of time itself, how we can never wind it back, how there’s no turning away from the future. damn it, i really cannot help but be morbid, even with a perfectly lovely piece of music.

but perhaps it’s not morbidity so much as radical acceptance of what life is, and with that comes the ability to hold a greater appreciation for every little moment.

i got a lotta feelings about my apartment, folx.

when i think about it, i first and foremost think of all the other people who have passed through it. as you know, i’m a people-centric kinda girl.

there was kairi, whom i moved in with first. then hazel. then imogen.

y’know, that’s not actually that many.

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of course, a lot of bad shit has gone down here. more than one suicide attempt, but one in particular that will stay with me forever. the incredible tension that has existed within these walls when things weren’t working out with me and a partner. (fucking pro-tip to ashe: do not live with a partner. not for a long time. it does not work.)

but there’s been a lot of good too. excluding those already-mentioned, i’ve had five other partner(?)s stay the night, and it usually has been mostly just relaxing together, listening to music and enjoying each other’s company. it’s almost always been pleasant. i’ve worked at github since before moving here, so it’s always been my place of work, which has for the most part been a steady and stabilising part of my life. i’ve had friends over to play games and have food. friends with their animals, sometimes. i cat-sat milton here. it wasn’t that long after moving here that i started therapy with my current therapist and finally got past the worst of my panic disorder.

there’s been a lot of self-discovery. a lot of self-implosion, too, and that’s always hard to face. there’ve been sleepless nights and more restful ones. some nights where i’ve felt hollow to the core, and some days where i’ve felt like life was full of meaning and wonder.

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i don’t know what’s to come. i struggled to reclaim this space as my own after everything with imogen earlier this year, but the last week has seen me go from hermitude in the study to spending time all over the apartment again, and enjoying it. i’ve let go of something. i still don’t know if i’ll want to remain here by year’s end when the lease expires. joni’s suggestion was that moving might itself be unsettling, and i can sympathise with that view point. on the other hand, a fresh start might be valuable.

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we’ll see how i’m feeling then.

it’s time for some “twinings pure green tea”. i made it with 98° water.

the mug is really pleasantly warm. it’s a little cool inside and i’m wearing my fingerless gloves, so i can cup it in both hands and feel the heat radiate. steam’s rising from the cup, and that’s an impossibly relaxing thing to see and feel as it brushes your face.

as it steeps the lightly stringent aroma begins to develop. my neck or throat is a little sore so taking that first sip is a little more difficult than i’d have expected. it’s still steaming hot, maybe 90-ish degrees, and the flavour barely comes through. at times like this, all you can do is keep smelling the roses. or the camellia sinensis, as the case may be.

blow a bit on the tea and the steam rushes to fog up your glasses.

i’m still struggling to taste it, and i don’t think it’s because it’s too hot. my taste buds might be a little out of it today. but one thing never fails: you let the tea flow into the back of your mouth — not yet swallowing, but letting it sit there and stimulate the taste buds at the back of your tongue. the bitter notes come out. works every time. the more bitter the tea, the more i love to do this — it’s like finally getting the full experience. (in reality, what’s probably happening is that it’s just stimulating more of your taste buds. the taste bud “map” suggests the bitter ones are at the back of your tongue, but that’s been thoroughly debunked.)

my throat is really getting quite sore by this point, and the tea isn’t something i’m very much able to focus on, or be mindful of. but it’s worth trying; when the going gets tough, etc. etc. it’s cool enough now (probably 70°) that i can take a relatively big sip and just hold it, swish it around my mouth. the temperature difference is really wonderful. it reminds me of a hot shower.

the blanket on top is red, soft, velvety. i don’t know what it’s made of. it’s the kind of material that isn’t especially thick, but feels warm. too warm under it and you sweat easily for some reason.

i think it came from kairi, it rather, that she brought it with her with belfast and then didn’t want to take it with her when she moved out. almost everything like that i’ve gotten rid of, donated, given to a friend. but not this. not because it reminds me of her. it’s just a really nice blanket.

there’s a purple blanket underneath it. same size, purple not red, and just a slightly different material. i’ve been snuggled up in it in many different places; couches, chairs, beds. it doesn’t mean anything specific. it’s just a nice blanket.

under that, a sheet. i had no idea you were “supposed” to sleep under a sheet for most of my life. i didn’t understand the concept of flat sheets whatsoever; fitted ones worked better, so why did they exist? it’s microfibre or some fancy word like that, which is another way of saying $20 at woolworths.

this place feels like something i’ve slowly reclaimed.