good atlas

Writing always calls me back. Always.

I hope I can get back into the head space of writing worlds again. But for now, here’s an opening, a door left ajar. A piece of pain turn into prose, because at the end of the day, writing always calls me back.

—

Hot tea, Cold Showers, August 2019

1.

It begins with a cold shower and a hot cup of tea. 

I wake up with a lump in my throat, a dread so immediate it was as if it hugged me to sleep and never left my side. The moment light cuts through my eyes is the moment a sort of muddy clarity seizes my body, traveling in a flash from one joint and limb to another, weighing upon each weight, and I’m jolted out of slumber. The cave where I could curl in and find the comfort of silence in sleep, dissolves at once. 

I remember, that was how it felt like, waking up to depression.

2.

Depression is a kind of sadness I’ve never felt before. I try to recount the minutes that felt like eternities, a blur swathed across my eyes, an atmospheric disturbance, but the more I dive into detail, the more I speak in metaphors. And the more I speak in metaphors, I’m afraid no one would understand me. That maybe I am making up stories, weaving something beautiful with veins congealing, then rupturing in my mind.

Because depression is a sickness of language, words and stories that were once my refuge grow and transmute into cancer. They are still mine, these words, but it is said I can no longer trust them. 

3.

Every night I wait for the time where I can breathe again. I light the joint in front of me, then watch the red glow between by eyes and let my mind settle into a calm, a sort of quiet for the first time in the day. The voices that so voraciously taunt and sneer in my waking hours, now retreat into a buzzing, fading background, like white noise on a television put on pause. 

But if I’m not careful, if I don’t take enough, I’m only letting myself drown in a murky pool of ruptured language. A voice– a man’s voice, then sometimes a woman, distinctively my mother, or an echo of it– tells me that I am nothing, I am terrible, I am useless…a fortifying I, followed by all the things I don’t want to hear about myself. 

4.

A memory. I have been crying for hours now. The thought that I’d be left alone at home, is a thought where emptiness doesn’t just seize, it engulfs me whole. What would you do? the voice asks me, shouting in the vast hollow of my mind that it hurts my insides. I hasten, Quick! watching time tightens into a coil, and try to fill the empty hours I see staring at me in my head, scurrying like a bee with a broken wing, then faltering and falling into quicksand. 

The thought of my loneliness makes me want to hurl, curl up into a ball, and make myself small, smaller, and smaller, until I no longer am.

Anxiety is what it is. A feeling welling up in the body, so overwhelming that the brain shuts down. A feeling a sentence cannot hold; it only does so in retrospect. 

My shirt crusts from dried up tears and snot. I am battling with my own mind. Sayaka watches helplessly from a distance, waiting. Come here, she says to me. Let me give you a massage, let me make you tea. I nodded weakly, placing my head on her folded lap, and there, her fingers pressed onto my temples, slowly unknots the anxieties from my head. Where words fail and its failures stark in a reverberating tin can, the hands quiet and calm, puts it into place, pressing it shut.

I tilt my head to look up at her, and our eyes meet amid crystal tears. She smiled and I smiled back.

5.

In the darkest hours where I can’t see anything else but the glaring nothingness which is myself, Sayaka tells me to make some tea. She tells me to take a cold shower, as if the warmth of tea would seep into my muscles, sinking me into a gentle calm. As if the cold shower would wash away each poison thought and I’d come out of the bathroom renewed. 

I promised her I would take those steps, that no matter what I feel I would settle into a routine of tea and showers, every morning at least. I wanted so badly for it to work, like a prayer or a spell, but she reminds to be patient, to be kind. 

Remember the kind voice, she says. Remember mine. It’s a feeble one, but it’s there. Remember the kind voices, hold on to it, she says. 

Like commas in a long drawn sentence, then fullstops, these acts of drinking tea and taking showers were like markers of sameness, and then of change. A tiny accomplishment for the day, a story I write about myself. A sip of courage and a splash of clarity, the companion I needed to find the kindness in my head again. 

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1. No matter how much you don’t want to do it, make yourself a hot cup of beverage.
2. There is an importance in reaching out to friends. Remember a confidant you once had. Or a friend just at the tip of your phone. Text them, tell them you’re crying. Tell them what hurts.
3. You’ll falter and fail against yourself. It’s okay. Try to get some sleep. 
4. You will wear your lover down again, and again. Ask for forgiveness, ask for patience. Tell them everything that you think is poison, even yourself. In their presence, suspend yourself. 
5. Go for therapy. 
6. Learn to meditate. 
7. Exercise. 
8. The cog and wheels of your muscles will start to grind again. You sweat thinking it’s poison you’re releasing. You tire yourself because you’ll sleep better. You think about Chungking Express’ Cop 223, sprinting across the football field, sweat and tears merging with rain. 
9. Your partner will force you to go for a run. You’ll do so, hating it, hating her and then yourself. You’ll run, scream, then come home, the same. A few days later, you run again.
10. In the midst of the day, after a cup of tea, a thought. Maybe you should try yoga. 
11. Go for it. Then go for it some more.
12. Keep a diary or a journal or a Twitter account. Write about the things that makes you happy for the day. Write about gratitude, write your ideas. Forget writing about your pain.
13. Spend some money on yourself.
14. Watch the world go by from your balcony.
15. Pick up a skill, a simple one. Look around and ask yourself what is it you want to do and what is it that you can do. You’ll find that stamping is a great way to keep the focus while silencing your own voice. It’s you, the linoleum and the print. Two hours go by and you feel relief, staring at what your hands had made. 
16. Eat good food.
17. Be patient.
18. Tell your friends about your day, even if there’s nothing. When you don’t already see it, a friendship is born again. 
19. Fight so hard and so much you tire your lover and yourself to a breaking point. Then realise, just how much you love her.
20. A friend reminds you of the person you are. A lover encourages you to be the person you want to be. Take these kind voices and ask yourself again, what do you want to do?

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