Tatyana in medias res

I have said this before and I'll say it again, I love to go out and eat by myself. I love to go out and watch movies by myself and I love the most to shop by myself. All these are activities where others add little value. You are eating the food, not them. You are watching the movie while the other person stays quiet and watches the movie too, and you are buying stuff for yourself and so the only opinion that matters is your own. These are some of the few things I enjoy doing when I need to take a day for myself. Six days of the week, you can't shut me up around people, but taking a day to recharge is important as well for me and my mental health. After having lived in the States, Nigeria, Spain and India, I have come to the conclusion that India does not endorse people who like to do things by themselves. In madrid, it is never hard to find a spot in the park or in one of the million cafes to enjoy the sun and the wind. In the States there is always a hike, or a kayak or a ...

Play this song as you read:  the thing about perfect days, is that they come without a warning. sometimes you realize half way during the day that you are going to remember every minute of this day with startling clarity. some perfect days are the perfect mix of spontaneity and planning. some perfect days are the right combination of nostalgia and freedom. some of them are full of your favorite people. some of them have your best friend getting married. they make you forget punctuation and grammar. lately I've had a few of them in quick succession and they have made me see magic everywhere. one of those was spent reading love letters and poems written in high school, full of hope and innocent love and lifelong promises. it was spent sitting next to a friend, watching the city lights dim by the seaside. we saw the city together like tourists, ate all the must eats and drank all the must drinks. it was singing songs out of tune in the not long enough commute without a care...

So hear me out. Sometimes you life sucks and absolutely nothing is good. You have had a shit year, you don't have a job and if you do it's the pits, your love life is worse than your job scene, you are far away from every one you love, and you are don't really have a home. And its totally reasonable to be absolutely depressed and cynical because good things are avoiding you like the plague. Even if every single of those things are happening to me and my life totally is the dumps, I am happy. This is my way of dealing with unhappiness this year. I am borrowing happiness from those around me. While I have nothing to be happy for, those around me do and that just makes me feel fantastic. My best friend in the whole world is getting married and that single handedly has made the universally accepted trash year 2016 worth it. Not just one, but 4 more of my closes friends have decided to seal the deal in the coming year and their happiness makes me ecstatic. Their happiness is ...

Kayaking was our thing. Laying under the trees on the grass was our thing. Watching tv but not really watching it was our thing. You making food for me, even though I am better at it was our thing. Bollywood was our thing. Mexican food was your thing that became my thing. Watching the sunset on your balcony was our thing. Dancing to cheesy songs was our thing. Watching youtube clips and laughing my head off was my thing that I hoped would become your thing. Driving in the car was our thing just because of how much time we spent in it. Video chatting every night was our thing even when we lived 20 minutes away from each other. Listening to music, drinking beer and just chatting on the couch after work was also our thing. We had all these things but you chose to focus on the one thing that wasn't. And that is what our story will be reduced to. 

Everything is normal and you are just watching a friends episode for the 23rd time while also searching for the end of the internet. And then suddenly it hits you like a brick. You freeze, and you have trouble breathing. You are taking deep breaths but it still feels like you aren't getting enough oxygen. Your brain is spinning, but you know nothing is actually moving. You are trying really hard to focus on just one stationary object but it feels like you are on a really fast moving carousel, everything is a blur.  You feel like you need to get out of your body, and maybe if you bleed it out it will feel better. But you don't do that obviously because thats very stupid. It's like missing a step on the staircase in the dark, its that lurch in your stomach but you don't know how long it will last. The last time it was ten minutes, the time before that it was thirty. It could be a lot longer this time. You are freaking out even though a part of your brain knows you ...

There is something very intimate when you look into someone's eyes. It can sometimes make you forget everything that you have been thinking about. You can have full conversations with your best friend only using your eyes, when you are surrounded by too many people who can't know things you need to communicate. You can use your eyes to apologize to someone, to share a smile with someone, to express desperation, to express horror and anger and to show desire for something or best of all to roll them at someone too basic. Then there is the greatest of all use of eyes, as shown perfectly in this song up to a minute and twenty seconds, when you are searching for the most elusive of all emotions. I look at you, you look up, I look away. I look up and catch you looking at me and still I look away. This little dance of peeks and glances, and I hope you are braver than me. We look at each other a little too long and know we aren't just friends anymore. You almost begin to re...

Fall. A september to remember, an october full of splendour and a november to treasure. It's nature's way of showing us that everything is beautiful even as it is dying. By every measure autumn is my favorite season of the year. I do prefer to call it fall of course, because my first experience with it was in the US, therefore fall it is. It springs on you one morning in a cute little way when 5 leaves on the tree in your driveway will have turned pink. And then bam! ten days later the whole tree is pink and orange and a wonderful bit yellow. You can never get enough of this season either, the fantastic things that happen to the leaves never gets old. It's also when all the wonderful things happen. Oktoberfest, halloween, diwali, birthdays, bonfires, apple picking, apple pies, pumpkin pies and everything in between. Every leaf is now a flower, it's like a grand finale of the year. Outside my window, the leaves are changing, the sunset is even changing, it's ...