Three days up, three days down: DAY ONE
The morning sun scorches my skin through the large window beside my bed. The sun burns; burns through my skin, makes its way to my brain, tipping it to a boiling point, like a fire devouring my gloom, destroying all my attempts to resist waking up. And just like that my mood shifts. The slumpy slumber is broken with heat and sweat. I feel the sun is magick! I feel ready. I feel up. The world feels bearable. The world makes sense again. The world feels kind. The world feels beautiful. The world feels wonderful. I feel motivated. I feel upbeat. I care about the world again.
I prance up and glide through my room, metaphorically of course. I look around and I see all the pending to-do things that have been piling up for the last three days. My double bed only has a small spot clean to fit my crouched body to rest, there are a few wrappers and too much of crumbs from my stressful binge eats, a few packets of cigarettes, a few sweat-reeking clothes, my journal and an array of academic books, notebooks and story books and my laptop, scattered around. The dishes in the sink have become a stinky hill of metal and glass. The bathroom rack is a hay short of all my used clothes falling into the mud-footprint-stained floors. I pour a dollop of cat food into the bowls for my cats. I only wash my coffee mug and a spoon to make my morning coffee. I savour it, each sip with a puff of smoke. My procrastinating for half an hour delays my mental to-do list for the day, but better late than never, right? I want to daydream because it’s such a good day because I’ve found a good song to groove to because I feel amazing and I want to enjoy this moment; yet I push and put on my chores playlist and scrub my heart out, scrubbing the dishes to perfection, taking a minute and a half for each item, scrubbing hard water stains, scrubbing through fungi, and making sure they smell good and are up to the proper hygienic standards. Twenty minutes pass by as I realise that my gown is damped from water splashes and that’s exactly when I think “I need to clean the iron silted taps!” Hence, I do what I do best, go take a smoke break as my gown dries up from the fan fuelled wind.
The music switches to indie-rock and I almost fall back into dreamland, BUT I can’t rest. I cannot daydream in peace on a garbage of a bed. My routine is easy and I am efficient, at least sometimes. But the hardest part of making a bed, is changing bedsheets. I am very particular about it. While removing the dirty bedsheet, the dust should not fall back into the mattress; the way to prevent this is to tuck out the corners carefully and then folding the bedsheet in from four corners and then lifting it off the mattress. My neurotic brain perfects the act with every change. Now, when it comes to placing a new bedsheet, I want the sheet aligned properly without creases like they have it in hotels. This particularity of how things should be, do not bother me today, I do not hate it today, I enjoy it today and pat myself for being almost a ‘perfectionist’.
Now what shall I do? After the thorough sweep and mop of the entire furniture-less apartment, I do feel tired but I also need to catch up to three days’ worth of productivity. I end up deciding to do more chores, sort the laundry, dust a bit and arrange the things back at their right place. Today, I am convicted to go home; my parents have been wanting to talk to me and spend some time for a while now.