29th October, 2026. 11:37 PM.
I had dinner, combed my hair over the dustbin, went to shit, cried over the commode, took a bath, and came to bed. I looked here and there on the internet while I was thinking of writing the next blog post. I read the last one. I am impressed. Wow. But not too much, because I am feeling like writing again. Which means the pangs of hideousness, anxiety, paranoia, sadness, loneliness, meltdowns, resentment, hatred, distrust, defeatism, misery, hopelessness, etc, etc, etc are back. So back. Should I pick up where I left from? Try and trace till this point of being cramped up underneath the blanket again? Breaking down again? I can't even remember most things. I think it started on 17th October, Saturday. I had to work that Saturday even though it was my off day. But, I had come to terms with that. The day before I had ordered groceries and with it, my second avocado. So, Saturday morning, before starting work, I made the same guacamole toast. This time, the fruit was ripe and soft, so I made the spread, and it creamed nicely. It was a soft morning. I woke up early, did household chores, dishes, put up curtains, made the avocado toast breakfast, and as I was finishing making my guac, my father suddenly asked me a question. He asked if the results or information about the next steps for the job he had asked me to apply for are out and I should check it. It was a job my mother kept pushing me to apply for despite me telling her that I don't want that kind of job. So, I didn't really apply for it. What do I say to him, if not, okay, I will check it. I said exactly that, took my guacamole and bread and went to my desk. I just couldn't stop thinking. Did he just ask that randomly? Did he just ask that to strike up a conversation? Did he ask that with some ulterior intention? Did my mother tell him to ask that? Did he ask my mother first and he didn't get an answer via her from me so he asked me directly? Why? Why is he talking to me? Why? Why are they doing this? What should I do? How can I get a job by myself? I know for a fact that the jobs they suggest are not a fit for me and I wouldn't even get them. And, I don't even want them. But. No. Not but. And. And, at the same time, I am flailing around trying to find a new one. I continued working. I have started properly loathing this workplace finally. Not the type of work. The clients, for sure, because they are mostly government bodies or shady organisations trying to get close to government bodies. And, the workplace colleagues except one or two are insidiously annoying. I imagine the entire organisation collapsing on them when I leave. It's my wistful thinking.
And, it led to this rotting spiral of dissociation and daydreaming. Ever since, I have just been dissolving into MDDs and DPDRs. Just constantly engulfing time and days and nights with my daydreaming about different situations. Days and nights passed by. I kept daydreaming. About this and that. About people I came across on the internet. I kept reading about them and I kept imagining things. I made up worlds in my mind. A poem came out of it. Art direction. It's because the person I was diving deep into and the world he belonged to fed fodder to my daydreams. I kept digging and digging while my brain and my body kept flailing and flailing. My real existence, on the other hand, was paralysed because this addiction to my daydreams distracted me from my ongoing existence. Which is a comfortable stoppage point. But it's temporary. In these daydreams, I am just flowing in life. Flowing with life in me. Talking to people. Loving people. Going out. Creating things. I daydreamt about writing plays. Directing plays. The poem for dVerse’s Oct. 22 prompt, Art Direction, was bred out of such a daydream where I kept imagining myself sitting amongst people, some of those I kept diving deep into and some of my coworkers from my current workplace (but, they are all nice to me in these scenarios...) and we were talking about an event with many plays which had one of mine. The one I kept thinking about on the commode which I also mentioned in my last weblog post. I kept talking to them. Telling them about how I came to be there and I daydreamt a back story. I ran away at 18 or 19 (deliberately blurred the age) and I ran with a boy a little bit older than me. We lived together for a month. And then he left me. I went back. Six years or so passed. We bumped into each other again and we wanted to ask each other if we wanted to run away again but we were meeting after six or so years, so we maintained the superficial formality. And we arranged a second meeting where we started off with the same superficial formality but then we abruptly told each other at the same time that we would like to run away again. And the third meeting happened at the airport with our bags packed. I daydreamt about writing plays after he left me when we ran away for the first time. And, during this event with plays, I am bringing one or two of them back. A play about a sub whose partner dies after 20 or 22 years of their dom-sub marital relationship and she doesn't know where to put her devotion anymore. She processes her grief while undoing the labors of submission she carried and performed for him. Their dom-sub dynamic had a core aspect of her consuming leaves for him. It was set during the Sumerian period. The name I gave was “The Leaf”. Another play was based on the oldest known prison diary in the Western tradition and one of the earliest surviving first-person accounts written by a woman: The Passion of Saints Perpetua and Felicity. Perpetua was arrested alongside her enslaved companion Felicity and others for refusing to perform sacrifices to the Roman gods. In my play, I attempted to show Felicity’s narration. I named it: “The Most Ancient Slave Diary”.
Anyway, such were the days and their dreams spiralling in my brain. All while, my real and actual life was passing by. And, I was also meagerly passing through it. The two courses were coming to an end. I had taken up another voluntary project while another voluntary project was lined up. All while overworking. I had to prepare two projects for my courses. I was doing fine until deadlines came too close and I just collapsed and started procrastination. Over the weekend (24-25th), I kept delaying and delaying. I crossed deadlines and then I begrudgingly picked them up. I did them over long periods of nights. Stayed up late and completed them. Although I missed a meeting on Monday that was set up by one of the course coordinators with an external advisor. I kept thinking of an excuse while haphazardly finishing the presentations and submissions. I completed it anyway and both of the presentations happened on the same day, yesterday, one in the morning and one in the evening. After that, I ate some leftover store-bought almost-stale snacks and cozied into my blanket and slipped into the daydreams while watching the videos of those people. I had moved to the next generation of those people actually and was deep into the lives of their kids who are, by the way, as old as me. And, they have had a thousand trips to Europe, they are married, have done and abandoned various projects, etc, etc, etc.
Today passed by as well with work. It was a bit frustrating. But in the back of my mind. I was still soaking my brains and body and my existence in these daydreams. It all came down when my mother came to my room in the late evening. And kept poking me to get up and start preparing for dinner. We did a little bit of “you go first” and “no, you go first”. She got up after a while and I went up as well. She was reheating the food while I took out some plates and chopped some cucumbers and raw mangoes for salad to have with dinner. I had my dinner while diving deep into their life videos and after I was done, my mother was ready to have hers. I did some nightly chores of locking doors, checking windows, etc. before going to the bathroom. My mother told me the cyclone has had a major impact on our village. She smiled while she told me. You’d think it was a sad smile. But, I have always felt very uncomfortable with that smile. Because, I know the intention behind that smile. It's that peculiar, almost smug satisfaction of knowing something that I apparently don't. Or, at least, getting to make me feel like I don't. Like she's informing me of something and simultaneously reprimanding me for not already knowing it. And, somehow, I am supposed to feel guilty… guilty for not knowing, guilty for not asking, guilty for not being sufficiently concerned, guilty for sitting in my room, going about my life, while things are happening elsewhere that I am apparently expected to know everything about. It's not just her. My father does it. My sister does it. This strange, condescending way of talking to me as though I am perpetually unattached, uninformed, unaware, incapable of understanding things unless they explain them to me. And, even their explanations come with this underlying insinuation that I should have known better. If I ask questions, I don't know anything. If I don't ask, I don't care about anything. And, if I already know, there is always something else I apparently don't know. I don't know how much of this is deliberate. But, I feel it. That constant, almost imperceptible effort to make me feel smaller than I already do.
31st October, 01:33 AM.
I paused writing last night and let my mdd chloroform me to sleep. I woke up in the morning. Got to work after making tea. Simultaneously, the rooms were getting cleaned. Everything was back to normal between me and my mother. By the way, my sister & I do not speak. I worked and worked and worked today. My mother and I chatted in between throughout the day. She was telling me bits and pieces of what was going on. Whether father is going to visit the village. How much crops are lost. The water engulfed the whole district or two. And, there is possibly another cyclone coming. I feel like I have forgotten how to apply for jobs. I had a meeting with a co-worker I work with. We ranted about the vapidity and vainness of the project we are working on and how the client is an abuser-whitewasher and the government is piggybacking on it to beautify their name and even our organisation didn’t oppose it until they got snubbed. I finished work and did a major and desperately needed grocery haul with my mother after eating lunch at around 6:30 PM. Yes. I think I heard my mother tell someone, “She doesn’t know how harmful it is. Or, maybe. Actually, she knows.” I had been ruminating about making a paneer tikka wrap with these tortilla wraps I saw and this recipe I stumbled upon. So, I bought some items for that. Since I bought those, I didn't get an avocado... Fingers crossed if and when I make them. I probably have to make them over this weekend. Late evening, my mother and I put on a bedsheet. It’s always fresh to put clean bedsheets after rooms are cleaned. And, I asked her if she would oil my hair. I oiled my hair after a long, long period of time. I window-shopped some clothes [pants, particularly] and some basic skincare. I do not and cannot use skincare products the way people are using them these days. I cannot even buy that much. Because the ones I selected today are still in the cart. I don’t know if and when I will buy them. It has also been a long time since I have used moisturiser and face wash. I was a diligent body moisturiser-er as well. It stopped a good amount of time ago. Anyway, I didn’t have dinner. My mother had her dinner and went to sleep. And, I was scrolling through some more recipes of the wraps as midnight approached. Then, I had the urge to eat some puffed rice. So, I made that as my dinner. While chowing down, I watched those people again. After finishing that, keeping the actual dinner in the fridge, shutting off all the lights and closing all the doors, and spiralling quietly into MDD for a little while, I came to write. I wrote the three pending dVerse poems. Read, read, read if you want to.
I have a working Saturday tomorrow. I am going to have a major withdrawal symptom as I have no classes, no quizzes, no tinkering around to build projects from next week.
By the way, the daydreaming still continues. It always snowballs. I have been rummaging deeper and deeper into the lives of those people. So “perfect”. Such “perfect” families. Such “perfect” education. Such “perfect” autonomous jobs. Such “perfect” creativity. Such “perfect” videos. Such “perfect” failures. Such “perfect” successes. Such “perfect” breakfasts. Such “perfect” proposals. Such “perfect” partners. Such “perfect” friendships. Such “perfect” girlhoods. Such “perfect” trauma stories. Such “perfect” fuck-ups. Such “perfect” uni lives. Such “perfect” gap years. Such “perfect” heartbreaks. Such “perfect” recoveries. Such “perfect” relocations. Such “perfect” apartments. Such “perfect” inconveniences. Such “perfect” existential crises. Such “perfect” rebellions. Such “perfect” mistakes. Such “perfect” second chances. Such “perfect” freedom to squander time, money, opportunities, relationships, and still have something to fall back on. Such “perfect” boredom. Such “perfect” uncertainty. Such “perfect” lives where even the wrong turns seem to lead somewhere. Even their failures have a narrative. Even their aimlessness has an aesthetic. Even their misery seems to have a life to happen in.
Here I am. Counting my avocados. I have one, and then two avocados. A small, almost tender continuity. I have a soft Saturday morning. I make breakfast. My father asks one question. And suddenly, what was supposed to be an ordinary morning becomes a series of interrogations, suspicions, worries about employment, autonomy, agency, life, freedom, abandonment, and escape. Then the daydreaming takes over. Meanwhile, my actual life continues demanding labour, presentations, deadlines, domestic participation, and decisions. Constantly ricocheting between the life in which I am making things happen and the life in which things keep happening to me.
After my mother and I put on the bedsheet, I saw a packet of gummies. I asked her, "Where did this come from?" She told me my sister's friend got it from Thailand, and gave it to my sister. My sister gave it to my mother. I asked her if I could try them. So, probably I am gonna go to bed, try some gummies, and drown myself in those videos, while my daydreams ruminate on the rock bottom of my mind [...]
~ Oizys.