An eclipse
The month of December usually concocts a strange kind of melancholy for many after all, and so here I am, deciding that there are worse things in the world than not having another hand to hold.
something from the archive.
Photo by Klara Kulikova on Unsplash
It starts in the silence. I sit up, rumpled sheets beneath me, wondering since when did being alone become too familiar. The month of December usually concocts a strange kind of melancholy for many after all, and so here I am, deciding that there are worse things in the world than not having another hand to hold. I try to look back on where I was this time last year - sleeping in unfamiliar beds, fighting the tiredness from long shifts, complaining that the world doesn’t give back enough. Things have obviously changed.
You can never tell when the healing begins - months will pass and days will bleed together so much they’ll seem like a giant eclipse. It’s a seemingly endless cycle until one day, you’ll wake up and realize that the things that used to hurt you don’t anymore. You find that you can take solitude with the stars every time you walk home alone. The music on the radio that had a special place in your heart back in high school no longer holds the same meaning. Suddenly, you won’t crave for someone else’s company, nor miss breathing in your lover’s arms at the end of the night. Being alone won’t be synonymous to being lonely, it would simply mean you huddled up in your covers watching reruns of Stranger Things. In the weeks to come, being alone would be the one thing you’ll look forward to at the end of the day.
The trick, I’m told, is to keep moving. It’s harder in days wherein I feel like not doing anything at all, that moving an inch from my bed seems like too much of an effort to muster. It’s even a bigger battle to face when the voices get louder. But the sun rises and the sun sets, and every time I look in the mirror and all I see is cracked debris, I tell myself - you have to keep moving. I watched my mother rip up her life apart and start over elsewhere after losing many years of her life to sadness and despair. I watched my best friend laugh louder and love harder after losing her first lover. Someday, I’ll watch myself grow and muster up courage to weed out dead flowers inside of me. Until then, I’m still trying to let enough light in. There is no perfect formula on how to get by, god knows everyone I’ve met is only here to try and make things better. Perhaps for them, it started in the little things: a prayer every morning, that perfect cup of coffee, or taking in five deep breaths before heading to work. For me, it must’ve happened all at once - I’ve drowned out my woes and regret and woke up completely sober.