I woke up with the feeble sound of rain pattering outside. Just then, in the haze of not having fully woken up, it occurred to me how maybe it wasn’t the rain. What if it was some neighbour a floor above or below my own doing some maintenance early in the morning? The thought made me angry for a split second until I settled for the more rational alternative—it was raining. I chuckled at how human I was, and a minute later, I got out of bed.
I replied to a few important messages; I left some for when I was done writing. I was learning to save my state of mind for these words. It did help to some extent, for I managed to write almost daily with this shift in perspective. Perhaps, there is some merit in protecting oneself. I wouldn’t know. I have rarely kept myself first. This was as new for me as for the few people disgruntled by this change in how I carried myself.
I thought about how I had slept with a slightly heavier heart last night as I made my bed. The morning after you slept with sadness always felt softer, and the rain outside, which I could see falling now since I had drawn the curtains open, only added to this air of calm. If we had even a sliver of care for ourselves, we were gentler with ourselves now and then. It took a lot of time to learn to care for ourselves, however. We were the last people we learned to care for.
I felt some hunger but didn’t want to have breakfast yet, so I picked a croissant up and had it with my coffee before writing. This little satiation almost made me not want to write anything, so I made a note of not having anything before I had written every day. Caring for ourselves came in different ways. In my daze of the croissant’s subtle sweetness, I sat for a while, staring at the wet grass in my balcony, which albeit fake, looked real enough in the right setting.
My gaze shifted to the drops sliding down the glass panels of the balcony. I noticed how they were out of step with the others. I believe, at some point, they took to their own pace—some slid slowly, some stopped altogether, and some splashed now and then in the puddle which had formed right below them.
Something about this made me happy, and so I began writing.