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.
Friday, October 30, 2026
Even Their Misery Has a Life to Happen In & I Am Just Counting My Avocados
Sunday, October 11, 2026
The Tiles Break, Then the Ball Falls.
I am writing here from underneath my blanket while my mother sleeps next to me. I am writing after having a full and a half breakdown under this same blanket in silent-scream mode. But just because it was silent doesn't mean it was just mental. It was all ... mental, psychological, physical, too too physical, emotional, too many tears and sobs. What happened? Well I could start from the inception of my league and lineage but that would be a long story and I really don't know or remember a lot of details. I could start from my time when the streak of bad luck started in my life but you can read the thousand versions of that closet theatre play here in any post on this weblog. I will start with where I last left. Things were becoming cool between me and my mother. We were talking, working, cooking, etc… discussing what went wrong with my sister towards me because I didn't even say anything during that conversation. Anyway…
Last night I saw an email that was sent to me in the late evening post-work hours. HR had sent me my new contract with no salary upgrade, so I frantically started job search, thinking of ways to respond and/or send questions. I spent a really long time applying for a lot of jobs, late into the night. I had the dinner that my mother and I prepared pretty half-heartedly and my mind was occupied with too much anxiety. I slept really late. I wrote a draft email that I thought I would send HR with some questions.
This morning, Oct 8th, I was chatting with my mother. She was supposed to go to the doctor. And conversations went by. I brought my tea to my room, to my table and started working. Then I heard some noises. I saw my sister was ranting to my mother and crying. I couldn't make much of what she was saying but I figured it out. She was talking about the last time my mother had gone on a vacation. Was it last year? Or the year before? And our father's behaviour during that time. She might have said something about me but I didn't hear directly. Since the environment was tight and breathless. And her attitude towards me. And how she was increasing her voice to make me listen. And then..
My brain just slipped like a ball into the mud and rolled away. I started having a breakdown. Which kept breaking and breaking. You know like those tile breaking games. You keep breaking them. And they keep falling. You think there is an end. But there is no end. It's a pitless rock bottom. What an oxymoron? That’s the right literary device, right? I don’t know and I'm too tired and cramped up to check… In the abyss-like breakdown, I ended up sending that mail to HR that I had drafted. As the day passed by, I had locked myself in the room to break down into pieces perpetually while working. Not eating. Not responding to anyone. And I didn't want my mother to enter and see me and ask me any questions. Although, she doesn’t really ask much when she sees me cry. We don’t have that culture in our family. We turn our face and leave. The only time we understand concepts like privacy and space. Anyway… I was still in the breakdown mode when the HR replied. It was a bit late in the afternoon. It was after a meeting with my teammates for a presentation where I kept suggesting a solution but they didn't hear. Sometimes, I wonder why I even try? Anyway, the HR response was okay. More of a saving-their-own-ass-in-a-shady-contract kinda response than actually answering-our-queries-while-we-non-consentingly-and-obliviously-meander-in-their-murky-waters-of-shady-contract response. But, I responded by thanking them for their response “clarifying” everything and said that based on this understanding, I will be sending the signed contract. Great, now I have to go out, take a printout of this, sign it, scan it, and send it to them. I was breaking down again and again. The familial violence and the stagnant, shitty, shady workplace with toxic and abusive coworkers who have become “department heads” / “managers” and managers who have suddenly become “associate directors”. Pair them with a vapid job market and a vile society out there. It all constrained me and closed in on me at once. I felt as if someone was holding me down in a small, small room. Technically, physically I was safe. But, my whole body has been feeling unsafe and insecure. Shivering and panicking. For what? Nothing. I don't know. There is no reason. Or maybe there are too many reasons. Just waiting for something to happen. Just that crawling feeling. Like something is going to happen. Like something bad is going to happen. Like how you violently tap the screen of your phone anticipating something will happen in that tile breaking game but it just keeps breaking perpetually. You kind of wish you literally ‘burst’ into tears and flow away forever. Like if you break down as hard as possible, something will happen and it will all come to a sudden end. Just collapse forever. But it doesn't. Rather, the day, the evil, devil day just passes by.
I didn't eat much. In the middle of the day, I bathed and ate some puffed rice and took medicine for the empty gaseous stomach and riling headache after the HR responded. I thought the bath and some meagre food and medicines will help me keep a sane mind while I continue to break down and apply for jobs and work. I didn't drink evening tea. Just some peach fizz and water. Water was important.
Finally, at night, my mother came and told me to check her phone and her bank statement to verify if the money she was trying to send to someone did go or not as the app said the payment failed. During that time, thank god(?), my face was okay and I wasn't actively breaking down. I fixed it and she asked if I was going to have dinner. I think my body couldn't say no. I had dinner and while eating dinner, I found this show on YouTube that occupied my mind throughout the dinner and after that I could eat at the dinner table and was able to just… be without falling down crying. It only kept me occupied till my mother came to bed and fell asleep. After I finished it, and tried watching some suggested shows of the same person, I couldn't. I kept my phone away as it was at 2%. Then, my body vomited out the rest of my anxiety, worries, sadness, depression, and other psychological waste by way of making me break down again and again. So, that's why… a full and a half violent breakdown under the blanket in silent mode. Then I went to the bathroom, cleaned up. Changed and had some water. Then I went to bed and wrote this.
I feel so… alone. And, I feel so… responsible for this loneliness. I know I made this, I mothered this, I raised this. It's mine. My burden to carry. Never did I think it would cause me this pain when I was sculpting it. Never did my thoughts about this loneliness crystallise into a proper understanding of what shape it would take in my life and how it would mould my life. But, I feel so urgently unsafe and insecure. All the taunts, jibes, mockeries, shames, humiliation, degradation, hurtful behaviours, their unapologetic and intentional hypocrisies, their mean voices, their abusive actions just seep into my intrusive thoughts and keep amalgamizing into something vitriolic and monstrous inside my head and force me into that small, small room where someone was holding me down.
10 October, 21:23 PM
What happened yesterday, Oct 9th? My memory is a bit fuzzy but let me jog my memory? I woke up. Um, how did I wake up? I don’t remember. I cannot remember. I remember breaking down in bits and pieces here and there. I think my mother came to wake me up but I was a bit awake. But, I didn’t respond to her. Then, I woke up. I remember making my own breakfast too late while keeping an eye on work if something came up. I think I didn’t have much work. I did complete my timesheets which took some time. But, I was deliberating whether to go out and finish that contract thing. I didn’t. I still haven’t. All I remember is a memory of an old web series that hit me from the show I was watching last night. So, I looked it up. It was taken into some app. Previously, it was available for free on YouTube. I started watching. I didn’t mention this yesterday but the evening before yesterday, while I was helping my mother in cooking dinner, I noticed my laptop’s hinge is broken because of which the keyboard deck keeps moving up when I lift the lid. So, this particular bit became a device in my recurring MDD-driven intrusive thoughts that have been fueling my breakdowns since yesterday. I fell asleep, I think, by completing that show. The first season was a bomb of nostalgia. The last season was a bore. In the beginning of last season, my free tier came to an end, so I paid for the first level of the subscription tier for a month which came with ads but allowed you to watch for unlimited minutes. Cheap with lots of ads. Late capitalism with enshittification. I felt like a baby. You know, how a baby cries and then you distract it with some toy or a trick.
Anyway, today, I did not do much work. There is an event tomorrow towards which many people are working. So, the whole day was quite lazy. I am working on completing my project for one of the two courses I am doing. My mother and I got some choice groceries. The day went by. My breakdowns were a bit wobbly. The tears leaked here and there. Eventually, I came to my desk to continue writing this entry.
I have been researching buying a laptop. I don't know what I am going to do about it. I don’t know what will happen. How is it that there is always something that needs fixing? Something that needs money? Something that needs doing? I rewatched the YouTube show a couple of times. It was a book reviewer I love. So…
11th October, 14:35 PM
I couldn’t continue writing. I had to stop at 22:00 PM. I woke my mother up to inquire whether she and my father will eat or not. She told me if I can go and give my father the food as everything was ready. I asked him and he said he was going to come upstairs so I started arranging plates and bowls for him. And, I asked my sleepy mother whether my sister is going to come home and when because when I called out my father to ask about dinner, he was locking the gates for the night. I told my father that my sister was on her way back home. Meanwhile, my mother, who was refusing to wake up, sat up and came out of the bedroom. She started reheating the food and putting it out on the plate for my father. She asked me to take it downstairs for him. I did and he asked me again when my sister was going to arrive. I said, she is on her way. I had zero idea. She had called my mother to say that she was on her way. Anyway, I convinced my mother to eat and just go to sleep rather than continuing her nap for a little more and delaying dinner. We started bringing out our dinner. I had informed my mother when I woke her up that I would not be having dinner. I did some other chores like putting the dishes in the washer. While that was happening, my sister came home. Nobody really asked her anything. She came back from her first ever swimming class. I did end up having some assortment of side dishes as dinner next to my mother. We both shared the complaints that the vegetables were absolutely raw. My mother finished her dinner and went to sleep. I finished my half-assed raw-y dinner and completed some other chores like putting the remaining food in the fridge, hanging up the washed clothes here and there, locking doors, etc. Then, at 23:35 PM, I came back to bed and was scrolling the phone and I came across a poem by Emily Dickinson: It struck me—every Day
It struck me—every Day—
The Lightning was as new
As if the Cloud that instant slit
And let the Fire through—
It burned Me—in the Night—
It Blistered to My Dream—
It sickened fresh upon my sight—
With every Morn that came—
I thought that Storm—was brief—
The Maddest—quickest by—
But Nature lost the Date of This—
And left it in the Sky—
It made me feel like writing, but my tired body prevailed. I was too tired to do anything with that feeling. So, I didn't write. I switched between surfing the internet, trying to sleep by throwing the phone away, reaching out for it again, having mild breakdowns, MDD-driven nightmarish intrusive daydreams just creeping around, watching gibberish here and there. And, in no time, it was almost 3:00 AM. I felt like shitting so I went to the bathroom. I had a weird idea. The story that had mesmerised and disarmed me some days or weeks ago came back to me while I was in bed. Because a phrase used there was also the name of the book that was mentioned in the YouTube podcast. I looked into that phrase a little bit and it was a phrase with a historical origin, series of adaptations here and there. This made my pull towards the story even stronger. So, I started visualising it. And then, bam! On the commode, I went on yet another MDD-trip imagining myself writing the screen script for that story and co-directing it with the author… Anyway. That helped me relax, the shitting. and also the fact that my period was finally over so I didn’t have to wear a pad anymore.
11th October, 15:35 PM
Sorry. I had to take an hour of break. [I think I will explain it further as I narrate. Haha. Unless I go away again.] Continuing where I left off. So, I came back to bed, all light and more tired at around 15:30 PM. Drowsy and on the verge of sleep, I was holding my phone all cramped up underneath my blanket, when my mother hit my head and asked me to sleep. After which I put my phone away and slept off. This morning, I woke up around 11:30 AM and went to my mother and she told me she tried waking me up so many times but alas, of course I slept at 4 AM. The day went by. I had some tea and some sugar-sprinkled coffee flavoured biscuits I had brought yesterday. My mother had her late or second breakfast. Then, we went to our bedroom. We were sitting and eating some Longans that I also got the other day. And, I was researching laptops to buy. My mother instructed me to go and check on the grandmother of the upstairs family. To check what she was up to as the family had gone out for a lunch feast function. I went and she was sleeping. A small, old lady. Her shrivelled up and wrinkled hands on her belly. I looked at her for a bit. Small white strands of hair flailing around over her small, sleeping face under the speedy ceiling fan. I went upstairs further to the terrace and looked around at the plants and the house where another couple lived, which was locked. I don’t know if they still do. Next to the locked door, a bamboo ladder to go up further to the cistern terrace. I didn’t even dare to. Anyway, I came back, and while going downstairs, I took another peek at the grandmother and she was taking a turn so I quickly ran away. I came back to my room and my mother was sleeping. So, I sat at my desk and opened my un-hinged laptop and started writing again at 14:35 PM.
I had to break away because I was having yet another quiet MDD-driven episode while writing and my mother asked me what I would be having for lunch. She informed me she would not be having any and that our father must not have even finished the breakfast-lunch she had given him. She kept pushing me for the fruits I had gotten yesterday. There was only an avocado left! By the way, my first avocado. So, to get her off my back I had to tell her I would be having that avocado and I had to get up and get going to show her I was going to make it. So, I did! After so many years of fantasising about how I would eat an avocado or guac or guac toast. It was a bit messy. It wasn’t ripe. But, my mother had given me the vegetables and put the pan to toast the bread, so there was no going back. I chopped a quick onion, half a tomato, and two chillies. After generously sprinkling two kinds of salt, I checked on the internet and some had posted that lime juice might help break it down. So, I squeezed half a lemon. I do not know if it helped or not. I kept mashing it with the back of the fork, sometimes stabbing it while toasting the bread. Then, I came back to my table and saw my mother, who was half-asleep, woke up a little bit. I informed her about the avocado situation and told her that’s why I wasn’t eating it. Anyway, it wasn’t bad! If we had let it ripen, the guac would have come out creamy. But, I put it on and between toasts and ate it. I think the onions, tomatoes, chillies with salt and lemon did the trick, which is also my favourite mix. So, I continued writing. Meanwhile, I also had a discussion with my mother about how sick she was feeling. A small quick flash of that old grandmother came to my mind and I turned back to see my mother’s face and it went away.
And, here we are. As I completed writing, I finished the toast, there was some guac left and I had kept two pieces of bread aside thinking whether I would like it or not. I brought it from the fridge while my mother got up to eat some puffed rice and milk, so I asked her if she wanted me to join her at the dining table. She said yes. And, we had a quick discussion about dinner and about my father going to leave at around 18:00 PM. Ending this narration at 16:05 PM and going to join my mother at the dining table to finish my half-assed, messy guac toast while she eats as well.
11th October, 18:10 PM
I am back to writing some more. I ate the rest of the guac with two pieces of bread while my mother nibbled on some biscuits with water waiting for her milk to get warm. Then, I got up to make some tea for myself. The water evaporated as my mother asked me to sit with her and wait for the leaves to boil a bit more. So, I showed it to her. I added some more water and got it done. My mother also got her hot milk to eat with puffed rice. We talked about things here and there. She randomly mentioned an actor who died two-three days ago. A well-known actor. And, he had an NGO. Etc, etc, etc. From some corner of my mind, a question popped up, didn’t he murder someone? By pushing her off the balcony? She said, no! She said, you must be thinking of some plot of a movie he must’ve been in. We looked him up. Then, I realised, after reading his wiki page, he had sexually harassed someone. Oh. Yes. But, then who was that who died by falling off the balcony. My mother started rummaging through her memory coming up with film names that the dead actress was in. I started searching. And, bam! There it was, that actress from the film that my mother came across. We started reading and discussing what had happened to her. She was sitting by the balcony and when she turned to get up, she fell off and died. She was 19. By the age of 19, she was a very successful and well-known actress. There was a huge controversy around her death being a murder. I saw another actress and remembered I had read about her as well who committed suicide after her partner had sexually assaulted her. I shared that story with my mother as well. That actress too had become a bit famous because of the last movie she did before she passed away. So, my conversation with my mother meandered towards that region: death, suicide, mental health etc… Oof! Sometimes we do talk about those things and more often than not, we are almost always on different sides but I don’t think we have ever been disgusting to each other. I think partly because we self-censor a lot. But we try to discuss. Like in this current topic at hand, my mother was constantly saying how people should just talk to each other or just try to find a solution or just find someone to talk to rather than giving in to utter despair and committing suicide. I tried explaining to her my stance that we can never, ever speak from the outside of someone’s life and judge or nitpick or question them. We don’t know what kind of people they might be surrounded with. There’s shame, stigma, denial, silence, misunderstanding, fear, threats, sadness, etc… that shapes everyone’s situations and circumstances. I also explained to her: those questions of why didn’t they tell anyone or how is it that they couldn't find one single person who listened to them or etc… don’t work anymore. People have asked those questions since time immemorial and they haven’t and do not help at all! We meandered into students committing suicide (given the current situation in our country!), people not getting jobs or people dying because of stress or toxic workplace. I tried telling her it is a deeply systemic issue to which she agreed. But, there were some things that I said she didn’t agree to. We both softly held our stances. It eventually came to a natural impasse where we both agreed to leave it unresolved. Then, we moved on to other work. She, to figure out what my father will eat and me, to put yet another shift of dishes in the washer. Then, I came to my room and surfed the internet a little bit. I reflected (but did not ruminate) about my conversation with my mother. Did that talk have any colours of our own interconnected and separate experiences with sadness, depression, suicide attempts? Were we trying to communicate our own issues with each other and/or commenting on each other’s issues by low-key referring to others’ examples? The thought fizzled out.
And, as I came here and sat to write at 18:10 PM. I first checked the word count before resuming. It was 3260-something. I wow-ed at myself. Haha. Of course, it was written in the span of a couple of days. But, such a consistent stream of consciousness with writing and chronicling? Who am I? Should I stop? Should I continue? Should I push myself further? Write more and more. Like, as I sat and wrote this, my mother gave me a call from downstairs. She went downstairs with some food for my father to have before leaving. She called and informed me that my sister would be having her dinner outside. She went out for a work team weekend outing in the morning before I woke up. And, so the plans my mother and I had made for dinner in the late afternoon changed. We revised our dinner plan and ended the call. And then, I resumed writing this. It’s physically strenuous sometimes. It’s a privileged form of physical labour. Writing. At your desk. And your back hurts. Your neck and your shoulder hurt. Your epigastrium against the desk, slouching over the laptop. Constantly leaning the upper stomach tightly against the rigid desk edge which folds the skin of the upper abdomen. I recently got a blister/boil right on that spot because I sat like that for a couple of days, non-stop, working, writing, and researching. I need to make sure I don't repeat this. What more do I write? I just want to type, type, type. Ahaaa. I have a major task of completing my project and I need to submit it tomorrow! And, I have that contract to get printed and signed and scanned and sent! Uh.
Something that’s been in my head for many months that I thought of after watching a video about Dostoevsky and Chekhov’s writing about sadness. How the sadness in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s work is grandiose, existential, and explosive with massive spiritual crises, moral guilt, madness, and extreme psychological torment. Dostoevskian abyss, like the symphony of the scream, is where sadness is an active, violent, and theatrical force and his characters wrestle with it like a physical demon. His characters scream, confess, suffer grand downfalls, and wrestle with God, sin, and the dark absurdity of human free will. It is cosmic and vertical in nature where characters are either reaching for the divine or plunging headfirst into damnation. Sadness is tied to monumental suffering that carries a redemptive or terrifying weight. Like, you are stuck in the moment where you are perpetually giving in to utter, utter despair and scratching the rock bottom with your bare nails. When Raskolnikov or Ivan Karamazov suffer, their internal guilt fractures their reality. Sadness becomes madness, fever dreams, and public confessions. It is a heavy, bruising weight, but it carries a grand purpose: through total spiritual annihilation, there is at least the possibility of resurrection. It is a scream into the void, demanding that God answer.
And, the sadness in Anton Chekhov’s work is quiet, everyday, and understated because it focuses on ordinary people experiencing quiet disappointments, unfulfilled potential, and chronic loneliness. Chekhovian sadness seeps in through small, mundane moments… Like Iona Potapov, a grieving father, trying to tell strangers about his dead son in the story Misery (The Lament) and ending up talking to his horse. Oh, the deep grief, loneliness, and human indifference. Or, Uncle Vanya where each and every character under one household’s roof carried a distinct form of sadness and life still went on which was also a materialised form of yet another kind of sadness. Or, The Three Sisters, the tragedy is that the clock keeps ticking. Chekhovian twilight which is like the ache of the unsaid and inside that ache, sadness is a passive, atmospheric fog which evaporates into the room and settles on the furniture. It is a horizontal and devastatingly ordinary streak in life and there are no grand downfalls, only the slow, crushing realization that tomorrow will look exactly like today.
I have been realising this contrast and have been trying to capture the exact frequency of both writers. It took me a bit to get to this point to be able to describe the difference between existential terror and existential weariness. I feel like I do experience both of them. I feel like my life operates on both the frequencies. You know the constant and perpetual breakdowns where you get the feeling of a shattering panic attack in the middle of a thunderstorm, where you feel the weight of every moral choice you’ve ever made. That’s the Dostoevsky frequency. Once that moment has inevitably passed, you have the Chekhov frequency. You know the feeling of staring at a beige wall on a rainy Sunday afternoon, realising you missed an opportunity five years ago, and quietly going back to doing the dishes. It is the representation of the two halves of human sorrow: the explosive crises that define us, and the quiet loneliness that wears us away. And, after this realisation has crystallised in my mind, I feel I only exist in these two halves. The tiles break sometimes vigorously and then the ball freefalls for a while until the next phase of tile breaking starts. I feel like this is a good ending to this long-winded entry. Don’t you think? We are at 4880-something words.
~ Oizys.
Friday, April 18, 2025
Somewhere Between the Breach and the Body — Soft Rot / The Price of Pretending
April 15, 2025 11:41PM - April 18, 2025 13:51PM
Soft Rot
Hi. I don’t really know how to start this, except to say that I’m tired. Not just "didn’t get enough sleep" tired — more like soul-tired. The kind of tired where you sit in silence and hope something inside of you wakes back up.
Lately, I’ve been pretending a lot. Smiling at the right times, saying “I’m good!” when people ask, answering emails like I’m a machine instead of a person. And I don’t even think I realized how much I was pretending until I sat down just now and started typing. The mask is heavy, you know? It’s real heavy.
There’s this low hum of fear under everything lately — like I’m waiting for something to break, or maybe it already has and I’m just the last to notice. I keep asking myself, Is this just what being an adult is? Constantly holding it together with duct tape and good intentions?
And also, here’s the weirdest part: underneath all of that, I still have hope. I don’t even know where it’s coming from. I just… I want more. I want rest. I want to feel like I’m allowed to fall apart without the whole world crashing down with me. I want to believe that it’s okay to not be okay, and that not being okay doesn’t make me weak, or dramatic, or broken.
I’m writing this, I think, because I need to hear it from myself. That I’m still here. That I’m still trying. That showing up — even in this messy, trembling, unsure way — still counts.
Some days, I feel like I’m doing everything just enough to not fall behind. I’m replying to things. I’m showing up. I’m getting dressed most days. But I’m also zoning out mid-conversation, forgetting what I walked into the room for, and crying during toothpaste commercials.
Which, okay — maybe the dog did get adopted and that’s objectively beautiful; but also maybe I’m not okay.
I keep thinking about how everyone’s out there doing things. Running businesses. Raising kids. Writing books. Taking trips. Posting photos with glowing skin and open windows and plates of food that don’t look like cereal at 9 p.m. I’m here trying to remember if I paid that one bill or if that weird noise in my car is a metaphor.¹
There’s this version of me I keep hoping I’ll “get back to.” The one who was energized. Clear-headed. Motivated. The one who didn’t second-guess every decision or feel like the ground might just disappear under her feet some days. But maybe that version is gone. Or maybe she was never really real, just a highlight reel stitched together from better lighting and fewer breakdowns.
I think that’s the scariest part: not knowing what’s normal anymore. Like, is it normal to be this overwhelmed by existing? Is it normal to feel like you’re too much and not enough in the same breath? Is it normal to look in the mirror and not recognize the person blinking back?
And still. Still. I want to believe in softness. In resilience. In mornings that start slow and coffee that tastes like hope. I want to believe I’m allowed to be this version of me — unfiltered, unraveled, unsure — and still be worthy of love. Of belonging. Of good things.²
Because maybe surviving is enough. Maybe telling the truth is enough. Maybe this — this messy, footnote-riddled post — is the most honest thing I’ve done all month.
I used to think if I could just figure it out — the right system, the right routine, the right number of steps in my skincare — then everything would click. That peace was some kind of prize you won after optimizing your calendar and drinking enough water.
Spoiler: I am very hydrated and still feel like a disaster.
I think I’m grieving something I can’t quite name. Not a person. Not a place. But maybe a version of the future I thought I’d be living by now. The imagined life I kept dragging behind me like a blueprint I forgot how to read.
Is it normal to outgrow your own dreams?
Sometimes I catch myself fantasizing about starting over. Just—poof. New city. New name. No unread emails. No mental clutter. Just wide-open mornings and a sense of possibility. But then I realize: I’d still be me. I’d still bring my overthinking, my fears, my stuff.
So maybe it’s not the location that needs to change. Maybe it’s the way I talk to myself.
I don’t know how to be gentle with me. I know how to push through. I know how to carry things. I know how to be “fine.” But gentleness? Grace? That’s a language I’m still learning. And damn, it’s hard.³
And yet. I'm here, aren't I? Still choosing to try. Still showing up in this small, quiet way — by putting words to a feeling I’d much rather bury. That counts for something. I think it has to count for something.
I want to believe it does.⁴
I used to think I had to earn rest. Like I needed to cross some invisible finish line before I could sit down and breathe. But the finish line kept moving. Every time I got close, it shifted a little farther away, whispering, just one more thing. And I believed it. I kept running.
Even when my body said stop. Even when my mind was unraveling like a thread pulled too tight. Even when all I wanted was to lie on the floor and feel something that didn’t hurt. I’ve gotten really good at disappearing without anyone noticing. Smiling with my eyes empty. Responding quickly so no one worries. Posting something light so people assume I’m fine. But inside, it’s loud. It’s chaos.
And I’m so tired of hiding in plain sight.
Somewhere along the way, I picked up this idea that I’m only lovable when I’m useful. That my worth is measured in output, or helpfulness, or how easy I am to be around. I don’t even know where that started. But it’s sunk deep. Like a root wrapped around my ribs. I want to start unlearning it. Slowly. Gently. Like peeling back armor that used to keep me safe, but now just keeps me small.
I want to ask for help without apologizing. I want to rest without guilt. I want to take up space — not with noise or hustle, but with presence. With breath. With truth. I don’t want to perform my way through life anymore. I want to live it. Even if it’s messy. Even if it’s slow. Even if some days, all I do is survive.
That still counts. I still count.⁵
And maybe — just maybe — someone out there needed to hear this. Maybe someone else is sitting in the dark, holding their breath, wondering if anyone sees them.
I do. I see you. I’m right here too.
Okay. Here it is.
I think I’m afraid that if I stop performing, if I stop being useful, pleasant, agreeable, people will leave. Not in a dramatic, movie-ending kind of way. Just slowly. Quietly. Like a room emptying out. Like silence settling in. Dust sitting down. I’m scared of being forgotten. Of being too much. Of not being enough. Of being nothing at all. All at the same time. How?
And it’s not just a fear, it’s a pattern. I’ve watched it happen. I’ve watched people drift when I wasn’t their favorite version of me. I’ve felt love shrink when I stopped shape-shifting. When I dared to say “I’m not okay.” It’s made me so good at editing myself down to the version that takes up the least amount of space.
That’s the rot. The belief that I am only valuable when I’m convenient. That love is earned by performance. That my pain is a burden. That honesty is too loud. That needs are too messy. That my real self is too much to hold. And because of that, I’ve taught myself to pre-abandon. I back away first. I detach. I ghost my own needs. I lower my expectations so no one else has to. I rehearse being left so the real thing doesn’t hurt as much.
But spoiler: it still hurts.
And what no one tells you about this kind of survival is that it works. It works. You stay safe. You stay small. You avoid disappointment. But you also start to disappear. You start forgetting what you even sound like when you’re not trying to please.
And now I don’t always recognize myself. Not in the mirror. Not in my voice. Not in the way I move through the world with carefulness instead of conviction. I want to burn the script I’ve been handed — the one that says “Be palatable. Be useful. Be fine.”
I want to write a new one that says:
Be honest. Be human. Be here. Even if they leave. Even if it’s messy. Even if I’m scared the whole time.⁶
The hardest part is knowing that I’ve done this to myself, too. Not just other people. Me. I’ve abandoned me. Over and over. Silenced myself when I needed to scream. Belittled my pain because someone else had it worse. Laughed when I wanted to cry. Said “it’s fine” so many times that the words feel like poison now. I’ve become fluent in self-betrayal. I know how to invalidate my own feelings before anyone else gets the chance. I know how to say “I don’t need anything” even when I am starving for care. I know how to ghost the parts of me that are inconvenient — the messy parts, the loud parts, the hurting parts — and pretend I am whole.
But I’m not whole. I’m cracked in places I can’t reach. And some days it feels like I’m rotting from the inside out — not in a melodramatic way, but in a quiet, invisible way. Like mold growing under the wallpaper. Like something you don’t notice until it’s everywhere. I’m scared that if people saw the real me — the whole, unedited, unfiltered me — they’d walk away.
Not out of cruelty. Just confusion. Discomfort. Like, “oh, I didn’t know you were that sad.” And what do you even say to that?
Neither did I.⁷
There’s no redemption arc here. Not today. There’s no tidy wrap-up, no clarity, no sudden sunrise. There’s just this. The raw, unfinished truth of it all:
I am not okay. And I’m done pretending I am.
Sometimes I catch myself fantasizing about subtraction — not in a minimalist Pinterest-board kind of way, but in a desperate please-make-it-quiet way. I want fewer tabs open, fewer expectations, fewer demands to be on. I crave space. I crave silence that feels like peace instead of loneliness. I want to do less and feel more. More rooms to enter into with less sneers, less taunts, less sighs. But here’s the catch: at the very moment I’m craving less, I need more (of something else). More reassurance. More softness. More love without performance. More care I don’t have to earn. And isn’t that the paradox? I’m shrinking everything down just to make room for what I’m scared to ask for.⁸
There was a time when I loved being alone. It felt like freedom. A choice. Now it feels more like absence. Like everyone else left the party and I’m still cleaning up, unsure if they’ll come back or if they were ever really here for me in the first place. I don’t know when solitude turned into exile, but I miss the version of me that found comfort in her own company.⁹
I’m tired of being congratulated for coping. For pushing through. For showing up when I’m crumbling inside. There’s this strange praise people give — “Wow, you’re handling so much!”¹⁰ — and it always feels like a compliment wrapped around a cry for help. Like I’m being rewarded for performing wellness while actively falling apart. I don’t want to be resilient today. I want to be soft. Fragile. Unremarkable. I want to exist without being strong all the time.
There’s a fire under this fog. I don’t show it often — it doesn’t look pretty in Instagram captions or Zoom meetings. But it’s there. A deep, guttural frustration at how much I’ve had to endure while smiling. How much I’ve sacrificed for the sake of “not making things harder for anyone else.”¹¹
And I am angry. Angry that I was told to be nice instead of honest. Angry that burnout is treated like a badge instead of a warning sign. Angry that asking for less is seen as laziness and wanting more is seen as greed. And yet — even in the middle of this emotional graveyard — something keeps blooming. It’s not loud. It’s not dramatic. It’s more like a flicker. A whisper. That maybe tomorrow could feel different. That maybe I’m not beyond repair. That maybe something good could still find me, even now. Even here. Hope isn’t a clean thing. Nor soft.¹² It’s messy and suspicious and often shows up in disguise. But it’s here. And I’m learning to let it stay.
I don’t know what version of me will read this months or years from now. I don’t know if she’ll still be tired, done, waiting for the end or if she’ll be lighter, freer, whole or if she'll be she anymore in ways I can’t imagine yet. But I hope she’s proud of me. Of this. Of the trying. Of the truth. I hope she looks back and whispers, “You didn’t give up. Even when it would’ve been easier.”¹³ There you go, that's the hope. The cyclical hope. Hoping for misery (of the future) to disappear while stewing in misery (of the present). Could there be a more Miseria ending?
The Price of Pretending
And now, there’s this new weight — not just emotional, but economic. A slow, creeping violence that wears a suit and calls itself a delay. My salary’s late. Again. And again.¹⁴ And what begins as frustration calcifies into fear. Into guilt. Into the shame of needing what you’ve earned and being made to feel like asking for it is rude. Aggressive. Ungrateful.
Every email I draft to HR feels like an apology. Every sentence is padded in “just checking in” and “kindly requesting” and “if you could please.”¹⁵ As if I’m not fighting for my own livelihood but begging for crumbs. My fingertips are laced with guilt ink, trembling between professionalism and desperation.¹⁶
This is economic abuse with a polite face.¹⁷ It doesn’t scream. It doesn’t hit. But it erodes. Quietly. It makes you question your worth. It makes you doubt your right to stability. It forces you to live in a suspended state — a constant limbo of waiting, adjusting, shrinking.
It’s rapid and vapid, this cycle—when you work in the social sector, giving everything, day and night, for the good of society… and then, when you ask for what you’re owed—what you’ve earned—you’re made to feel like you’re committing a crime. Why?
Why is it that when we advocate for survivor-centric approaches, trauma-informed care, and rights-based systems,¹⁸ our work is praised, published, applauded, and passed around like sacred scripture? But when we demand the same principles within our own organizations—when we say, "treat us like humans, too"—suddenly we’re “ganging up”?
What else are we supposed to do? We have no money. All we have is each other.¹⁹ If we raise our voices together, it’s called rebellion. If we stay silent, it’s compliance.²⁰ Is suffering a requirement to prove our commitment? Is living in pain and overdrafts the currency we pay to access institutional empathy?
Or worse—is our pain their business model?²¹
Is our exhaustion the raw material they polish into reports and pitch decks for donors? Do our trauma-informed designs only matter when they’re outward-facing, never inward-lived?²²
Because it’s starting to feel like we’re not just holding space for others’ pain—we’re being bled for it. Wrung dry for "the cause," while we teach self-care we can't afford, and preach boundaries we’re punished for having.
Home? That sweet, supposed safety net? It turns into a trap the second I crack. The moment I fall apart, I know it’ll snap back and chew me whole — the judgments, the side-eyes, the suffocating “we’ve all had it worse” silence. So I swallow my truth and I budget in fear.
This isn’t just one bad month. This is a pattern that’s so familiar it feels etched in my DNA.²³ Things fall apart. They always do. They get so, so bad. And then maybe—maybe—they start to rise. But I’m tired of surviving the bad. This time, I don’t have the strength to carry the fall again. I want out.
I daydream about running away. Just leaving. Starting over somewhere with clean air and no emails and mornings that don’t begin in dread. I imagine it so vividly it hurts. And then I tuck the fantasy away like a bruise I can’t show. Another scar. No wound. No blood. Just absence.
Footnotes:
¹ It’s probably both. The sound is coming from the dashboard and my fear of failure. Cool cool cool.
² That part was hard to write. My fingers hesitated. But I’m leaving it in. Because I think someone else needs to hear it too.
³ My default setting is “Do better.” The idea of saying “You’re doing your best” makes me want to cry, which probably means I need to hear it more.
⁴ If you’re reading this and nodding along — hi. You’re not alone. I don’t know you, but I’m rooting for you like it’s my full-time job.
⁵ If you only brushed your teeth and scrolled aimlessly today, that’s still something. You’re still here. You’re still trying. That is not small.
⁶ What if the people who leave were never really holding me to begin with? What if the ones who stay — even when I’m raw and real and ruined — are the only ones who matter?
⁷ Grief isn’t always loud. Sometimes it’s just not answering texts and forgetting how to be excited about anything.
⁸ Also, I’m not talking about Marie Kondo “sparking joy” minimalism. I mean the kind of minimalism where your nervous system stops playing the Jaws theme during every group chat notification.
⁹ There’s a difference between being alone and being forgotten. One feels like peace. The other feels like being erased in real time.
¹⁰ Yes, I showered. No, that doesn’t mean I’m emotionally stable. It just means I couldn’t handle one more thing smelling bad today.
¹¹ I want to punch the air every time someone says, “Just take a bubble bath.” Like yes, L, let me exfoliate my generational trauma.
¹² Hope is stubborn. Like a dandelion pushing through concrete. And I hate it for making me believe things could get better. But I also need it. Desperately.
¹³ Also, future-you is gonna be so grateful you kept these words. Even the messy ones. Especially the messy ones. She’s gonna look back and whisper, “Damn. Look at you. Still showing up.”
¹⁴ Yes, I’m aware rent doesn’t accept “emotional satisfaction” as payment. I checked. Repeatedly.
¹⁵ "Just follow up again?” Sure. Let me rephrase my trauma in Excel-friendly language one more time.
¹⁶ The only thing worse than writing a “salary delay” email is re-reading it to make sure I sound grateful enough to not be blacklisted.
¹⁷ If you're wondering what economic abuse looks like in nonprofits, it's often wearing a kurta, quoting Paulo Freire, and ghosting your invoice.
¹⁸ It's funny how “dignity” is always in the mission statement, just never in the payroll cycle.
¹⁹ For a sector built on empathy, we really know how to professionally gaslight our own.
²⁰ HR: “We hear you.”
Me: cool, can you pay me though?
²¹ They say “we’re all a family here.” If this is a family, it’s the kind that eats its young.
²² The real irony? Our trauma-informed workshops have better care models than our actual HR policies.
²³ I want a world where being paid on time isn’t seen as a privilege, but as the bare minimum.
P.S.: This footnote idea taken as an inspiration from Emily Moran Barwick. You can read her post, Hi. I'm Terrified, Creatively Constipated, and Existentially Angsty as Fuck. And I'm Judging Every Word of This Post. And It's Not What I Want It to Be. It is amazing, so amazing, that you will never come back to my blog.
P.P.S.: If you made it this far, congratulations. You’ve survived my nervous system’s entire PowerPoint presentation. And, I know what you're thinking: "Honestly, this could’ve been an email. To your therapist. But here we are."
- Oizys.
Monday, April 7, 2025
Tonight, Like Some Nights
But then—always then—there’s the guilt, too. Guilt for even daring to feel anything close to peace in the same breath as the ache. Guilt for wishing, in some quiet corner of my mind, that the pain could be less. That we could just talk about anything else. But it is, and it isn’t, that simple. Each word spoken feels like it’s steeped in the years we both carry, wrapped tightly around our ribs, squeezing us from the inside. Each silence, too, is like a stretched thread of memory that won’t snap. And I wonder, sometimes, whether the weight will ever stop pressing on us, or if it’s simply become a part of us, like a shadow.
I catch myself wanting to say something comforting, something that will dissolve the tension in the room. But what words are there? What words exist to undo a lifetime of bruises that run deeper than skin? What soft promises can replace the unspoken fears that tether us together, even as we try to walk in opposite directions? Every conversation with her feels like a tug of war-between the present and the past. And I feel the pull. Oh, how I feel the pull.
But it’s the waiting, isn’t it? The waiting that gnaws. The waiting for some definitive moment when the storm breaks, when the clarity we crave lands like a rainstorm that washes the dust away. But it never does. So, we keep dancing with the storm. We move through the chaos. And we are the storm. I think about it—about the incessant thirst for something we can’t quite name. Maybe that’s it. The words never come because there’s no language for the longing to break free, to just once exist in a moment untouched by all that was before, by all that drips from the walls of our memories.
Instead, we speak, again and again, of the same old things. And each time, it’s like trying to catch the wind in my hands—slipping through, shifting with the seasons, always just out of reach.
There is a force. A force that has no name, but it is. It’s the thing that winds itself into the very fabric of every conversation, every glance shared, every quiet moment between us. It’s a cold current that runs through the veins of our shared history, like a curse that was passed down, unbidden and unwelcome. It has shaped our minds, our hearts, and our movements before we even understood what it was. And when I look at my mother, I do not simply see the woman who gave birth to me. No. She sees the extension of that force—woven into the lines of my mother’s face, pressed deep into her tired shoulders, sewn into the sorrowful arch of her hands. It’s a genetic inheritance. A chromosome etched with scars of a life lived under something: something larger, something oppressive, something that has crushed womanhood into a form so unrecognizable that even she no longer knows what it is to be her—the her that was once unburdened, free of a history that collapsed on itself.
And I, oh, how I long to see the woman—the woman—that my mother could have been, could have still been, if not for the weight of the world that was handed down to her, piece by piece until there was nothing left but the hollow shell of a woman. I wonder if my mother ever knew what it was like to laugh without caution, to love without the worry of breaking, to be soft without the fear of being broken. But those are questions that are always too much. Those are questions that cannot be asked, because who would answer them? Who would dare to speak of a womanhood that was forcibly twisted, torn apart, and remade into something survivalist—something that could only exist through sacrifice and silence?
I try. I try to find even the slightest trace of it—my mother’s womanhood—as if it were a secret hidden beneath the surface of a story never fully told. I look for cracks in the armour of my mother’s exterior, hoping that the essence of her—the one that was never allowed to blossom—would somehow slip through like water trickling through the tiniest fissure in a dam. I want to catch a glimpse of it. Just once. To feel the pulse of womanhood that is hers too, buried somewhere deep within my dear mother.
But the cracks are few, and those that do appear are thin and fragile, fading almost as soon as they appear. I chase them, hands trembling, desperate to catch something—anything—that will prove that my mother’s womanhood still exists somewhere inside her. Maybe in the way she hums while commanding, in the way, her eyes soften when they talk of their lost loved ones, or perhaps in the brief moments when she forgets to hide her tears. I hope that if I hold on long enough, I can peel back the layers of resignation and see it—just for a fleeting second. But what I see instead is a woman who no longer knows how to be anything other than what life has made her.
And so I fight it. I fight the thought. The thought of becoming her mother. The thought of inheriting the very same fate—the same shadow that hovers over our lives like a distant storm. I try not to think of it, but the pull is always there. I am always one breath away from it, one step from falling into that same cycle of survival, of becoming a woman who is nothing more than a reflection of what has been done to her, who is nothing more than a version of what she was told to be, and nothing else.
And yet—there is a relationship. A refusal to be shaped by the same hands that shaped my mother. But the fear is there, too, gnawing at me, making me wonder if all my attempts to break free will only result in me becoming the very thing I dread. It’s a haunting, and it will not let me go.
Nights like tonight are when the weight of it all becomes so heavy, so palpable, that the air itself feels thick with the tension of unspoken things. I lie awake, the moonlight spilling through the window, but the shadows still stretch long and narrow across my thoughts. I wonder—sometimes desperately—whether there is a place where the echoes of my mother’s life will fade, where I will not always hear the whisper of that same cold current running through my veins, always reminding me that the past is never truly past. I wonder if there’s a way to sever it—to cut the thread that binds me to a history she can neither escape nor fully embrace.
And yet, there is no escaping it. No severing the cord, because it exists in my skin, my bones, my breath. It exists in the subtle ways I hold my hands, the way my voice quivers when I speak of things I cannot forget, the way I stiffen when the world presses too hard. My mother’s history is my history now, inextricable, woven into the very fabric of my being, like an ancient song that I was born knowing the words to, even though I never asked to learn them. And so, there are moments, too, when I am not fighting against it—when she is not running—but instead, I am simply sitting in it. Silent, still, like the calm before a storm that never fully breaks.
There are days when the weight of that inheritance feels like a blanket that has been folded too tightly, too many times until it is impossible to shake it free. But then, there are the moments in between—the flickers of something soft, something tender—that remind her that she is not simply defined by the past. There are the cracks that reveal something else, something deeper than the scars of survival. There are the glimmers of light in my mother’s eyes when she speaks and the days before all the sorrow before the world had taken what it could and left them both with what remained. There is the warmth of her hand on my arm when the words fail us both, and we simply sit together in silence, not because we have nothing to say but because there is nothing more to be said. And in that silence, there is a tenderness, a recognition of shared grief, of something that can never be untangled from the knots of their lives.
And in those moments, I allow myself to soften just a little. To stop fighting for a future that doesn’t bear the same weight. To breathe, just for a moment, in the space between our shared silences. I let myself feel it—the warmth, the tenderness, the connection that exists between us, even when the storm is raging. For all the heaviness of our history, there is something undeniably real in this bond we share. Something fragile and beautiful, like the way a broken flower still manages to bloom.
But even as I allow myself this brief release, I know that the storm is never far behind. The weight of my mother’s life, my own inherited burdens, will sit there, just beneath the surface, like a tide that is constantly pulling at her. It will always tug at my edges, shape my thoughts, and seep into my dreams. And yet, I know—somewhere deep inside—that there is strength in this, too. Strength in the knowing that I carry both the pain and the possibility of something more, something beyond the confines of the past. There is strength in surviving, in standing firm against the pull of history, even if it feels like a losing battle some days.
Because there is something within me that refuses to be extinguished. Some stubborn flicker of hope, of defiance, that whispers even when everything else is quiet: you are not your mother. You are not just the sum of all the wounds that came before you. You are more than this.
But then, the pull comes again. The pull of that force. The pull of my mother’s history, my mother’s pain, my mother’s unspoken stories. The pull of becoming the woman who has survived everything, who has lived under the weight of the world’s cruelty and kept going. The pull of becoming the woman who holds it all inside, who carries the scars of every battle fought and lost, but still stands—still stands, even when everything else falls away.
I see it sometimes, in the curve of my own reflection. I see the trace of it in the way my fingers curl around the edges of my mother’s hand, the way her eyes flicker with a sadness I cannot name. I feels it, too, in the way my own shoulders have begun to curve under the weight of things I was never meant to carry. And I wonder, as I stares into the mirror of her own existence, whether this is my fate—to be forever caught between the echoes of the past and the desperate desire to escape it. To be forever searching for something that is both mine and not mine—something that I long to touch, to understand, to claim as my own.
But there is also something else—a quiet resilience, a soft, unwavering light—that refuses to be drowned by the weight of history. Something that whispers, even when everything else is heavy, that the storm will pass, even if it never fully breaks. Even if the words never come. Even if the past never lets go. You are still here.
And so, the dance continues. The storm swells, recedes, and swells again. I am caught between the past and the present, between the woman my mother was and the woman I am becoming. She is both at once—torn, pulled, stretched across time and space. But in my chest, there is a small, stubborn beat of something more—a reminder that even in the darkest of storms, there is always something worth holding on to. Even if that something is just the quiet belief that one day, the storm will finally, somehow, break.
And when it does, I will be there. I will be standing—undone, maybe, but also whole in a way that is my own.
On nights like tonight (and the past few nights passed), when the room is thick with the smell of aging walls and the soft hum of the world outside, I lie beside her mother, both of us caught in the stillness of a moment we don’t dare break. The air is heavy, like it knows something that neither of us can name. My eyes trace the outline of my mother’s face in the half-light, the way the lines have deepened over time, carved into her skin by years of carrying burdens no one should have to bear. And in those moments, in the weight of her gaze, the force—the unnamed force—seems to pulse, like a shadow cast long before their time.
I can feel it in the silence between them, like the ghost of a conversation that never fully formed. It wraps around us both, thickening the space until it’s almost suffocating, as if the past is pulling at them from all sides, refusing to let go. I try to breathe through it, but the weight of it—the inherited weight—presses against my ribs. It’s there, lodged in the creases of my chest, the way my mother’s exhaustion is so clearly her own now. The way the longing for something—anything—more, something other than this, grows with each passing night.
And I wish, then. I wish with a desperation that rattles my bones, that some tide would come—some great, merciless wave that would crash down on us both, sweeping away all the pain, all the history, all the things that bind us so tightly to each other. I wish for the force to be undone, for the unspoken bond to unravel, to dissolve into the night like sand slipping between fingers. I wish for an end. An end to the weight, to the heavy silence that we have both carried so long, the unbroken chain of survival and sacrifice that has kept us locked in this shared grief.
What would it be like to finally breathe free of this? To feel the warmth of the sun without the shadow of the past creeping over it? To live in a world where the past no longer demands so much of them—where the force does not wind its way into their every word, every glance, every touch?
But there is no tide, no great wave that will sweep it all away. I know that as soon as the thought forms, the impossible nature of it settles over me like a shroud. No tide will come to erase the weight. No wave will cleanse them of what has been handed down, generation to generation. They are bound to it, always.
And yet, there are nights like tonight when the longing for that impossible freedom is so fierce it burns—when I lie here beside my mother, not daring to speak, not daring to disturb the fragile quiet between us, and I ache for a life for me and my mother untouched by the force that binds us both. I ache for a future that isn’t a continuation of the past, for a world where I do not have to carry this same burden, the same history. But even as the ache swells within my chest, I knows that the past cannot be undone. The force cannot be undone.
It is a tide, in a way, but one that pulls us both under. One that keeps them from ever truly breathing free. And in that quiet, as the night stretches on, I lie there beside my mother who is softly snoring, feeling her exhaustion, the weight of it all pressing against my chest, the way the past is never far, always so close. And I wonder, just for a moment, if this is what it means to be tethered to something larger than yourself, something that stretches back through time, binding you to it in ways you cannot escape.
The force is not just a shadow, not just an inheritance. It is a stronghold—a prison built into the very bones of who we are. And on some nights like tonight, as I lie beside my mother, I feel the walls closing in, and I wish—just once—that it could all stop. That the weight could be lifted, even for a moment. That we could stand in the quiet, not as survivors of what has been done to them, but as women, as people, untethered from the past.
But there is no escape. There is no breaking the cycle. The force is too deeply embedded, too entrenched in the soil of their shared existence. And yet, even in the face of that, I keeps breathing, keep fighting, keep hoping that one day—maybe one day—it will be different. That the storm will pass. That the unspoken weight will be lifted, if only for a brief moment, so that they can feel the sun on their faces without the shadow of what has come before.
But tonight is not that night. Tonight, the force presses down on us both, and we lie here together, bound by the silence, the weight, and the yearning for something more that neither of us knows how to name. And in the quiet, I am left with the single, relentless thought: Will it ever end?
But even in that thought, there is a flicker. A faint, stubborn hope that refuses to go out.
But hope is an elusive evil, a trickster that dances just out of reach, teasing me with promises it cannot keep. It feasts on the wretchedness of our mother-daughter dance, gnawing at the edges of our connection, as if it were something to be grasped, something worth chasing. But the more I reach for it, the more it slips away, like sand caught between trembling fingers. It is not the kind of hope that heals or redeems—it is a shadow, an illusion that feeds off our shared suffering, luring us both into a cycle of longing for something that cannot exist. Not in this world. Not in the confines of this life that they are bound to, this life shaped and twisted by the hands of a patriarchal system that has never allowed us to simply be.
For in this system, hope is not a gift—it is a weapon. A tool of manipulation, wielded by the outside world, the masculinistic forces that shape everything from our identities to our realities. Hope tells us, “You can be more. You can rise above. You can transcend.” But these are lies. Hope whispers that freedom is possible, that we can one day escape the weight of our inherited history, escape the clutches of the force that defines our relationship. But in the end, it is only a mirage, a false promise that leaves us empty. The system that birthed us, that shaped us, that has taught us the art of survival in silence, does not offer hope. It offers compliance. It offers endurance, as though endurance were the greatest form of victory.
I see this, even in the quiet moments of connection with my mother. Hope, in its purest form, is the ultimate form of betrayal for women like us. For it teaches us to keep longing, to keep wishing, to keep fighting for a world that will never be ours. A world built on the backs of women like my mother, like me—women who have been reduced to nothing more than vessels of survival, vessels that carry the weight of the world on their shoulders, without ever being allowed to let it down.
The force that binds us, the one that has shaped our lives and our relationship, is no accident. It is the byproduct of a world that has systematically stolen from us—not just our bodies, but our stories, our futures, our right to exist without the burden of the past. And in that world, hope is merely a tool used to keep us shackled, to make us believe that something better is coming, that the tides will change, that there will be light after the storm.
But every time I dare to hope, I feel the weight of that truth pressing on my chest like a hand that will not lift. I feel my mother’s history coil around my own—every step my mother took in her shoes now feels like my own, every ache, every loss, every piece of my womanhood torn away to fit into a mold that was never meant to hold me. Hope, then, becomes a cruel reminder of what we can never have. It is a yearning for a future that the world will never grant us.
And yet, there are moments—those fragile, fleeting moments—when hope creeps back in. Like a soft breath against the skin, a whisper of a promise that maybe, just maybe, they are wrong. That maybe the world will change. That maybe I will not carry the same weight, will not be bound in the same ways. Maybe—just maybe—there could be a place for me, for my mother, outside the prison of this society. But I know better now. I know the game. I know that hope is not a ladder out of this pit—it is the very thing that keeps me falling deeper.
For the patriarchal world we live in will not release us. It does not want us to rise, to stand in our womanhood unapologetically. It only wants us to bend, to bow, to endure. And so, hope becomes a tool of compliance. A whisper that tells us that if we just try harder, if we hold on just a little longer, then we will be free. But I know better. There is no freedom in hope. There is only the weight of the chains that it keeps hidden in its promises.
The force that binds us will not be undone by a dream of something better. It will not be swayed by desire or longing. It is the product of generations of women who have been forced to bend to the will of the world, who have been conditioned to survive without ever being allowed to live.
And still, I lie beside my mother, the force pressing against my chest, the weight of the past always there, always close. And in that moment, there is no hope. Only the pull of a reality that cannot be escaped. Only the realization that we are both part of a machine, a system that is too large to defeat, too entrenched to dismantle. But even as the realization settles in, there is something else—something that stirs deep within me.
It is not hope, but something else—something that cannot be named. A quiet, soft, blurry fire, a defiance that burns even in the face of all the forces stacked against them. It is the last piece of our womanhood, the last piece of ourselves that the world has not yet stolen. And though it may not change anything in the world, it is enough. Enough to stand here, beside my mother, in the quiet, and know that we are still here.
Still alive. Still fighting, even if we are not yet free.
And perhaps that is the one truth the system, the force cannot take from us: the persistence of our existence, in spite of everything, is our resistance.
- Oizys.
P.S. - I know this entry is ridiculously long and intellectually redundant. The night is long too, and it won’t pass. So, I did not stop until my eyes dried up, and until my bile rose, and until the hands gave up.